EVOLUTION 245 



life. The civic States of Athens and Sparta, first experi- 

 ments as they were in public liberty, represented a most 

 stupendous advance in freedom on the earlier forms of 

 society. These States did more for the individual ; that 

 is to say, they protected his life and enlarged it, providing 

 him with the conditions of well-being in a way that was 

 impossible to the Eastern despotisms. But these States 

 did more for their members, and fulfilled larger functions, 

 just because they accorded to their members a larger liberty. 

 If, on the other hand, we contrast these ancient states 

 with a modern municipality, we find that their service 

 to their members was as much less effective as the recog- 

 nition of their private rights was more limited. After 

 all, life was not so safe on the streets of Athens as in 

 London or Paris. Nor did the city-state of Athens keep 

 the streets clean and light them, secure the conditions 

 of public health, build hospitals, provide for the poor 

 and distribute justice, as a modern city does. On the 

 other hand, the liberty of the individual, in the sense 

 of a capacity for conceiving worthy purposes and great 

 ends and of bringing them about, which is the only 

 liberty worth having, is as much greater in modern times 

 as social life is more highly organized. No doubt, the 

 laws of the State are generally prohibitive in form and 

 always restrictive in character ; they define and bind and 

 limit. But to regard them as mere hindrances to indi- 



o 



vidual development is like representing gravitation as a 

 hindrance to movement, or like thinking that joints and 

 sinews and muscles and nerves place a mammal at a dis- 

 advantage as compared with a mollusc. To dissolve the 

 State in order to make its members ' ' free," might seem 

 a desirable though an unattainable ideal to Rousseau ; but 



