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第9节

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the highest expression of the rationalism of his respective age;

attained to his ideal state:  for the latter conception may be in a

measure regarded as representing the most spiritual principle which

they could discern in history。



Now; Plato created his on A PRIORI principles; Aristotle formed his

by an analysis of existing constitutions; Polybius found his

realised for him in the actual world of fact。  Aristotle criticised

the deductive speculations of Plato by means of inductive negative

instances; but Polybius will not take the 'Cloud City' of the

REPUBLIC into account at all。  He compares it to an athlete who has

never run on 'Constitution Hill;' to a statue so beautiful that it

is entirely removed from the ordinary conditions of humanity; and

consequently from the canons of criticism。



The Roman state had attained in his eyes; by means of the mutual

counteraction of three opposing forces; (7) that stable equilibrium

in politics which was the ideal of all the theoretical writers of

antiquity。  And in connection with this point it will be convenient

to notice here how much truth there is contained in the accusation

often brought against the ancients that they knew nothing of the

idea of Progress; for the meaning of many of their speculations

will be hidden from us if we do not try and comprehend first what

their aim was; and secondly why it was so。



Now; like all wide generalities; this statement is at least

inaccurate。  The prayer of Plato's ideal City … 'Greek text which

cannot be reproduced'; might be written as a text over the door of

the last Temple to Humanity raised by the disciples of Fourier and

Saint…Simon; but it is certainly true that their ideal principle

was order and permanence; not indefinite progress。  For; setting

aside the artistic prejudices which would have led the Greeks to

reject this idea of unlimited improvement; we may note that the

modern conception of progress rests partly on the new enthusiasm

and worship of humanity; partly on the splendid hopes of material

improvements in civilisation which applied science has held out to

us; two influences from which ancient Greek thought seems to have

been strangely free。  For the Greeks marred the perfect humanism of

the great men whom they worshipped; by imputing to them divinity

and its supernatural powers; while their science was eminently

speculative and often almost mystic in its character; aiming at

culture and not utility; at higher spirituality and more intense

reverence for law; rather than at the increased facilities of

locomotion and the cheap production of common things about which

our modern scientific school ceases not to boast。  And lastly; and

perhaps chiefly; we must remember that the 'plague spot of all

Greek states;' as one of their own writers has called it; was the

terrible insecurity to life and property which resulted from the

factions and revolutions which ceased not to trouble Greece at all

times; raising a spirit of fanaticism such as religion raised in

the middle ages of Europe。



These considerations; then; will enable us to understand first how

it was that; radical and unscrupulous reformers as the Greek

political theorists were; yet; their end once attained; no modern

conservatives raised such outcry against the slightest innovation。

Even acknowledged improvements in such things as the games of

children or the modes of music were regarded by them with feelings

of extreme apprehension as the herald of the DRAPEAU ROUGE of

reform。  And secondly; it will show us how it was that Polybius

found his ideal in the commonwealth of Rome; and Aristotle; like

Mr。 Bright; in the middle classes。  Polybius; however; is not

content merely with pointing out his ideal state; but enters at

considerable length into the question of those general laws whose

consideration forms the chief essential of the philosophy of

history。



He starts by accepting the general principle that all things are

fated to decay (which I noticed in the case of Plato); and that 'as

iron produces rust and as wood breeds the animals that destroy it;

so every state has in it the seeds of its own corruption。'  He is

not; however; content to rest there; but proceeds to deal with the

more immediate causes of revolutions; which he says are twofold in

nature; either external or internal。  Now; the former; depending as

they do on the synchronous conjunction of other events outside the

sphere of scientific estimation; are from their very character

incalculable; but the latter; though assuming many forms; always

result from the over…great preponderance of any single element to

the detriment of the others; the rational law lying at the base of

all varieties of political changes being that stability can result

only from the statical equilibrium produced by the counteraction of

opposing parts; since the more simple a constitution is the more it

is insecure。  Plato had pointed out before how the extreme liberty

of a democracy always resulted in despotism; but Polybius analyses

the law and shows the scientific principles on which it rests。



The doctrine of the instability of pure constitutions forms an

important era in the philosophy of history。  Its special

applicability to the politics of our own day has been illustrated

in the rise of the great Napoleon; when the French state had lost

those divisions of caste and prejudice; of landed aristocracy and

moneyed interest; institutions in which the vulgar see only

barriers to Liberty but which are indeed the only possible defences

against the coming of that periodic Sirius of politics; the 'Greek

text which cannot be reproduced'。



There is a principle which Tocqueville never wearies of explaining;

and which has been subsumed by Mr。 Herbert Spencer under that

general law common to all organic bodies which we call the

Instability of the Homogeneous。  The various manifestations of this

law; as shown in the normal; regular revolutions and evolutions of

the different forms of government; (8) are expounded with great

clearness by Polybius; who claimed for his theory; in the

Thucydidean spirit; that it is a 'Greek text which cannot be

reproduced'; not a mere 'Greek text which cannot be reproduced';

and that a knowledge of it will enable the impartial observer (9)

to discover at any time what period of its constitutional evolution

any particular state has already reached and into what form it will

be next differentiated; though possibly the exact time of the

changes may be more or less uncertain。 (10)



Now in this necessarily incomplete account of the laws of political

revolutions as expounded by Polybius enough perhaps has been said

to show what is his true position in the rational development of

the 'Idea' which I have called the Philosophy of History; because

it is the unifying of history。  Seen darkly as it is through the

glass of religion in the pages of Herodotus; more metaphysical than

scientific with Thucydides; Plato strove to seize it by the eagle…

flight of speculation; to reach it with the eager grasp of a soul

impatient of those slower and surer inductive methods which

Aristotle; in his trenchant criticism of his greater master; showed

were more brilliant than any vague theory; if the test of

brilliancy is truth。



What then is the position of Polybius?  Does any new method remain

for him?  Polybius was one of those many men who are born too late

to be original。  To Thucydides belongs the honour of being the

first in the history of Greek thought to discern the supreme calm

of law and order underlying the fitful storms of life; and Plato

and Aristotle each represents a great new principle。  To Polybius

belongs the office … how noble an office he made it his writings

show … of making more explicit the ideas which were implicit in his

predecessors; of showing that they were of wider applicability and

perhaps of deeper meaning than they had seemed before; of examining

with more minuteness the laws which they had discovered; and

finally of pointing out more clearly than any one had done the

range of science and the means it offered for analysing the present

and predicting what was to come。  His office thus was to gather up

what they had left; to give their principles new life by a wider

application。



Polybius ends this great diapason of Greek thought。  When the

Philosophy of history appears next; as in Plutarch's tract on 'Why

God's anger is delayed;' the pendulum of thought had swung back to

where it began。  His theory was introduced to the Romans under the

cultured style of Cicero; and was welcomed by them as the

philosophical panegyric of their state。  The last notice of it in

Latin literature is in the pages of Tacitus; who alludes to the

stable polity formed out of these elements as a constitution easier

to commend than to produce and in no case lasting。  Yet Polybius

had seen the future with no uncertain 

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