582 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



the people, completely possessed by the State in person, pro 

 perty, and labour, transplanted to this or that locality as the 

 Ynca directed, and, when not serving as soldiers, living under 

 a discipline like that within the army, were units in a cen 

 tralized regimented machine, moved throughout life to the 

 greatest practicable extent by the Ynca s will, and to the. 

 least practicable extent by their own wills. And, naturally, 

 along with militant organization thus carried to its ideal 

 limit, there went an almost entire absence of any other 

 organization. They had no money; &quot;they neither sold 

 clothes, nor houses, nor estates ;&quot; and trade was represented 

 among them by scarcely anything more than some bartering 

 of articles of food. 



So far as accounts of it show, ancient Egypt presented 

 phenomena allied in their general, if not in their special, cha 

 racters. Its predominant militancy during remote unrecorded 

 times, is sufficiently implied by the vast population of slaves 

 who toiled to build the pyramids ; and its subsequent con 

 tinued militancy we are shown alike by the boasting records 

 of its kings, and the delineations of their triumphs on its 

 temple-walls. Along with this form of activity we have, as 

 before, the god-descended ruler, limited in his powers only by 

 the usages transmitted from his divine ancestors, who was at 

 once political head, high-priest, and commander-in- chief. 

 Under him was a centralized organization, of which the civil 

 part was arranged in classes and sub-classes as definite as 

 were those of the militant part. Of the four great social divi 

 sions priests, soldiers, traders, and common people, beneath 

 whom came the slaves the first contained more than a score 

 different orders ; the second, some half-dozen beyond those 

 constituted by military grades ; the third, nearly a dozen ; and 

 the fourth, a still greater number. Though within the ruling 

 classes the castes were not so rigorously defined as to prevent 

 change of function in successive generations, yet Herodotus 

 and Diodorus state that industrial occupations descended 

 from father to son : &quot; every particular trade and manufacture 



