THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 



disintegrate into a set of tribal communities. 

 But the old Empire had done its work too thor- 

 oughly for that. Roman principles, embodied in 

 the Catholic Church, and in the renovated Em- 

 pire of Charles the Great, exerted an organiz- 

 ing power which prevailed over the spirit of 

 clannish isolation, and by effecting the grand 

 series of compromises which we vaguely desig- 

 nate as the feudal system, laid the basis of mod- 

 ern society. 



If now we examine the ethical circumstances 

 of that vast modern fabric which has been reared 

 upon material supplied in the older days of 

 Rome — and which owes so much of its per- 

 manent character to the labours of the great 

 Catholic and Imperial statesmen of the Middle 

 Ages — we shall find that the process here de- 

 scribed has been continually going on. For the 

 primitive normal state of warfare there has been 

 gradually substituted a normal state of peace. 

 While in primitive times the interests of men 

 were supposed to coincide only throughout the 

 limited area of a petty clan, they are now seen 

 to coincide throughout vast areas, and the rail- 

 way, the steamship, and the telegraph are daily 

 bringing communities into closer union, and, as 

 George Eliot well expresses it, " making self- 

 interest a duct for sympathy." The spirit of 

 Christianity, first rendered possible by Roman 

 cosmopolitanism, has made, and is ever making, 

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