THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 



growing complexity of the objects which labour 

 aims at is paralleled by the growing complex- 

 ity of the modes of attaining them. Turning 

 to government, we see that by differentiation in 

 the primeval community some families acquired 

 supreme power, while others sank, though in 

 different degrees, to the rank of subjects. The 

 integration of allied families into tribes, and of 

 adjacent tribes into nations, as well as that kind 

 of integration exhibited at a later date in the 

 closely knit diplomatic interrelations of differ- 

 ent countries, are marked steps in social pro- 

 gress. Next may be mentioned the differentia- 

 tion of the governing power into the civil and 

 the ecclesiastical ; while by the side of these cere- 

 monial government grows up insensibly as a 

 third power, regulating the minor details of so- 

 cial intercourse none the less potently because 

 not embodied in statutes and edicts. Compar- 

 ing the priests and augurs of antiquity with the 

 dignitaries of the mediaeval church, the much 

 greater heterogeneity of the latter system be- 

 comes manifest. Civil government likewise has 

 become differentiated into executive, legislative, 

 and judicial. Executive government has been 

 divided into many branches, and diversely in 

 different nations. A comparison of the Athe- 

 nian popular government with the representa- 

 tive systems of the present day shows that the 

 legislative function has no more than any of 

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