372 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



evolve the resulting institutions. Even the Aryans, among 

 whom chiefly the less concentrated forms of political rule 

 have arisen, show us that almost everything depends on 

 favourable or unfavourable conditions fallen into. Originally 

 inheriting in common the mental traits generated during 

 their life in the Hindu Koosh and its neighbourhood, the 

 different divisions of the race have developed different insti 

 tutions and accompanying characters. Those of them who 

 spread into the plains of India, where great fertility made 

 possible a large population, to the control of which there 

 were small physical impediments, lost their independence of 

 nature, and did not evolve political systems like those which 

 grew up among their Western kindred, under circumstances 

 furthering maintenance of the original character. 



The implication is, then, that where groups of the patri 

 archal type fall into regions permitting considerable growth 

 of population, but having physical structures which impede 

 the centralization of power, compound political heads will 

 arise, and for a time sustain themselves, through cooperation 

 of the two factors independence of local groups and need 

 for union in war. Let us consider some examples. 



485. The island of Crete has numerous high mountain 

 valleys containing good pasturage, and provides many seats 

 for strongholds seats which ruins prove that the ancient 

 inhabitants utilized. Similarly with the mainland of Greece. 

 A complicated mountain system cuts off its parts from one 

 another and renders each difficult of access. Especially is 

 this so in the Peloponnesus ; and, above all, in the part occu 

 pied by the Spartans. It has been remarked that the State 

 which possesses both sides of Taygetus, lias it in its power to 

 be master of the peninsula : &quot; it is the Acropolis of the Pelo- 

 ponnese, as that country is of the rest of Greece.&quot; 



When, over the earlier inhabitants, there came successive 

 waves of Hellenic conquerors, these brought with them the 

 type of nature and organization common to the Aryans, dis- 



