268 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt, ii, 



demeanour shows that modern society can count upon an 

 organic or instinctive conformity to law on the part of 

 individuals, upon which ancient society could not count. 

 In early times, freedom from the yoke of custom meant 

 simple lawlessness ; and against such disintegrating lawless- 

 ness all the most formidable sanctions which society could 

 devise were brought to bear. Hence the feeling of corporate 

 responsibility is universal among primitive societies. " JSTot 

 only the mutilators of the Hermai, but all the Athenians — 

 not only the violator of the rites of the Bona Dca, but all 

 the Eomans — are liable to the curse engendered ; and so 

 all through ancient history." In such a stage of mental 

 development, the community as a whole is beset with 

 perpetual anxiety concerning the words and deeds of its 

 members ; and it is to a great extent from this sense of 

 corporate responsibility that persecution for heresy in opinion 

 or eccentricity in behaviour is ultimately derived. 



The inference from all these considerations is obvious. 

 Tribes with the strongest sense of corporate responsibility, 

 with the most rigid family-relationships, the most despotic 

 yoke of custom, go on growing through long ages at the ex- 

 pense of rival tribes in which the means for securing con- 

 certed action over wide areas are less perfect. Age after age 

 some competing tribes are exterminated or enslaved, while 

 others are absorbed by the victorious tribe and assimilated to 

 it ; and thus age after age the bond of tyrannical custom 

 becomes stronger and more rigid, while it extends over wider 

 areas and constrains a larger number of people to uniformity 

 of behaviour. Such a process will naturally result in the 

 formation of a huge social " aggregate of the first order," as 

 in Egypt, Assyria, China, jMexico, and Peru. The common 

 characteristic of these civilizations of lower type is that 

 their growth in size has been out of all proportion to their 

 increase in structural heterogeneity. Though they may 

 contain many cities, they contain nothing like the civic type 



