COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



formerly supposed to have occurred, until Mr. 

 Bryce and Mr. Freeman' dispelled the gross 

 error ; it is difficult to see how mediaeval Euro- 

 pean history could have been politically any- 

 thing more than a repetition of Grecian history, 

 save only in the extent of its geographical range. 

 Whoever is disposed to doubt so emphatic an 

 assertion will do well duly to ponder the fact 

 that the newly arriving Teutonic subjects of the 

 Empire (who would, in such case, have come 

 as foreign conquerors) had not advanced be- 

 yond the stage of tribal organization. On their 

 further aggregation into rural and civic bodies, 

 the autonomous spirit would have acquired an 

 ascendency which it might well have taken an- 

 other more fortunate Athenian federation, or 

 another all-absorbing Roman domination, thor- 

 oughly to destroy. Even as it was, it required 

 all the immense power of the Church, unflinch- 

 ingly exercised through many generations, to 

 prevent European society from disintegrating 

 into a mere collection of mutually repelling 

 tribal communities. But the Church not only 

 preserved the best social results of Roman do- 

 minion, by hastening the consolidation of each 

 embryonic nationality ; it also, by its peculiar 

 position as common arbiter between the difl^er- 

 ent states thus arising, assisted in the formation 

 of a new social aggregate of a yet higher order. 

 The modern system of independent nationali- 

 322 



