POLITICAL FORMS AND FOECES. 317 



entire community may, and ordinarily do, undergo change by 

 the formation of a passive class excluded from their delibera 

 tions a class at first composed of the women and afterwards 

 containing also the slaves or other dependents. 



War successfully carried on, not only generates this passive 

 class, but also, implying as it does subjection to leaders, 

 changes more or less decidedly the relative powers of these 

 three parts of the political agency. As, other things equal, 

 groups in which there is little subordination are subjugated 

 by groups in which subordination is greater, there is a ten 

 dency to the survival and spread of groups in which the con 

 trolling power of the dominant few becomes relatively great. 

 In like manner, since success in war largely depends on that 

 promptitude and consistency of action which singleness of 

 will gives, there must, where warfare is chronic, be a tendency 

 for members of the ruling group to become more and more 

 obedient to its head : failure in the struggle for existence 

 among tribes otherwise equal, being ordinarily a consequence 

 of disobedience. And then it is also to be noted that the 

 over-runnings of societies one by another, repeated and re- 

 repeated as they often are, have the effect of obscuring and 

 even obliterating the traces of the original structure. 



While, however, recognizing the fact that during political 

 evolution these three primitive components alter their propor 

 tions in various ways and degrees, to the extent that some of 

 them become mere rudiments or wholly disappear, it will 

 greatly alter our conception of political forms if we remember 

 that they are all derived from this primitive form that a 

 despotism, an oligarchy, or a democracy, is a type of govern 

 ment in which one of the original components has greatly 

 developed at the expense of the other two; and that the 

 various mixed types are to be arranged according to the 

 degrees in which one or other of the original components has 

 the greater influence. 



466. Is there any fundamental unity of political forces 



