COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



Hellenic political system is to be attributed to 

 its very incomplete integration. An aggregate 

 of the national type was in process of forma- 

 tion by the extensive coalescence of maritime 

 cities under the leadership of Athens, when the 

 Peloponnesian war intervened, vindicating the 

 superiority of selfish autonomy, and showing by 

 its result that the civilizing spirit of nationality 

 was as yet too feeble to prevail. 



It was first under Roman dominion that 

 national aggregation and the feeling of national 

 solidarity began to be brought to something 

 like completeness. By absorbing nearly all the 

 petty communities then existing within the lim- 

 its of the Mediterranean world, and by gradually 

 extending to their members the privileges of 

 citizenship, Rome succeeded in dealing to the 

 passion for autonomy a blow from which it has 

 never recovered ; while the enormous extent of 

 the Empire, and its ethnic heterogeneity, im- 

 parted to the national spirit thus evoked a cos- 

 mopolitan character destined to be of prodigious 

 service^ to civilization. The influence of these 

 circumstances upon the attitude of Christianity 

 I have already alluded to, and it cannot be too 

 strongly insisted upon. No human mind could 

 have even conceived, much less have carried 

 into execution, the idea of a universal religion, 

 if the antique state of social isolation had not 

 previously been brought to a close in universal 

 320 



