spirit in order. R. v. Mohl's objection (Statswissenschaft, I. p. 262), that a nation can be neither young nor old because children and old men live in it side by side, rests upon a misconception of the theory which he opposes. The ancients perceived clearly that nations, as organic units, pass through successive ages analogous to the youth and age of individuals, and Savigny has made the idea familiar to the legal circles of Germany. But in addition to this succession of periods in a nation's history, one must also consider that a nation has an innate character of its own. Just as some individuals are by nature childlike or even childish, and remain so in the prime of life, while others have an elderly and staid character even in youth, so there are nations which are childish and elderly by nature. This is most evident in the great race-divisions. The negroes are children several thousand years old, the Red Indians have for centuries displayed the characteristics of age. In Europe, the continent of manly nations, the Spaniards-quite apart from the period they have reached-represent the elderly, as the Germans the youthful, spirit. Whether young or old, and whether this youth or age is due to natural character or to the period of its history, the people transfer their spirit to the State in which they live. The manly forms of constitutional monarchy become a simple farce among the childish people of Haiti.

Y

CHAPTER V.

Division of

States according to

of the subjects.

THE PRINCIPLE OF THE SECONDARY FORMS OF

THE STATE.

HE quality of the head of the State determines the form

THE

Tof the whole body. But it is necessary to consider in

the rights the second place the rights of the subjects, in order to fully determine the legal character of the constitution, and to complete the Aristotelian division.

Unfree;

As in considering the government one looks at the ruling organ, so in considering the subjects, i. e. the nation in its narrow sense, one looks at their control over the government and their share in legislation.

By following this method of classification we arrive at the following three secondary forms of States.

1. The subjects are treated merely as a passive mass, bound to unconditional obedience to the governing power. They have no right of control nor any share in legislation. Such a State is absolutely governed, and we may call it the unfree form. And it is not only unfree when it is exposed to the arbitrary caprice of a despot (Despotism), but in a political sense it is equally unfree when the ruler recognises the restraints of law and protects personal property and freedom. (Absolute Government).

Half-free; 2. Some of the subjects, i. e. the upper classes, have the right of control and a share in public business, and thus limit the government. But the rest of the people, and especially the lower classes, have no political rights or freedom. These

states are half free; and may be illustrated by the mediæval states which were organised upon feudal principles or upon class privileges (Lehens- und Ständestaten).

States.

3. All classes have political rights. The whole country or Free nation controls the government and takes part in legislation. These are free states, or republics in the widest sense of the word (or national States, Volksstaten).

This control or share in the government is exercised either (a) directly through the assembly of citizens, as was usual in ancient times (Ancient Republics), or (b) indirectly through committees and representatives, the system of the present day (Modern Representative States).

If we now bring together the fundamental and the second- Applicaary divisions, we obtain the following results:

tion of this division to

funda

forms.

1. Theocracy tends, by its principle, to the class of unfree the four states. But it is not necessarily despotic, for the ruling God, mental or the priesthood inspired by him, may recognise and respect a law of the community. It may therefore approach to the second or to the third class, so far as the exercise of the divine rule is influenced by the co-operation of aristocratic classes or of a national assembly. In this sense the Jewish theocracy was republican.

2. Aristocracy gravitates towards the second class, the halffree states. But it may be regarded as unfree when the demos is wholly without political rights; or it may rise to be a free national State (Volksstat) if the demos is allowed, as in Rome, to have a real representation.

3. Democracy naturally belongs to the third class, the free States. But it may become a despotism to the minority, or an absolute government as regards individual citizens and again, in relation to a servile class (e. g. the slaves and helots of antiquity or the negroes in America), it may appear as a half-free State.

4. Monarchy, the most various of all kinds of state, forms numerous combinations with these three classes. The despotisms of the East and the absolute governments of the West are obviously unfree; the kingdoms and principalities of the middle ages, restricted by the clergy and the secular nobles,

were half-free; the Roman kingdom as organised by Servius Tullius, the kingdom of the old Franks and the modern Norwegians, all of which have given to the national assembly a distinct share in the government, may serve as examples of free monarchies and finally, the constitutional monarchy of the present day is the nearest approach which monarchy has yet made to a free State with a representative constitution.

When Aristotle's division, which rightly starts from the summit, is thus completed by a consideration of the base, the chief objections to it are removed. It is no longer possible to maintain that it wants precision, or that it fails in explaining such points as the close connexion between modern representative democracy and constitutional monarchy, or the essential difference between absolute monarchy and medieval monarchy limited by class privileges (ständisch beschränkte Monarchie).

Note. This analysis of the secondary forms of States was suggested by the very interesting study by George Waitz of the difference of State forms (Politik, p. 107 sq.). Waitz gives the name of Republic to a state in which the government rests either with the nation or its delegated representatives. On the other hand a Kingdom exists when an individual governs by his own power and in complete independence of the people. In his view the Aristotelian division is secondary, and his own is primary. According to him the Roman Empire becomes a Republic and the German Empire a Kingdom: the old Roman Patriciate is a Kingdom, the Napoleonic Empire a Republic. But this method brings confusion rather than order into the two divisions. The arrangement given above and based both upon the quality of the ruler and the rights of the subjects, is logically clear and necessary to complete the division of Aristotle. It also explains satisfactorily why it is that constitutional monarchy is more closely related to representative democracy than it is to absolute monarchy.

CHAPTER VI.

ΤΗ

THEOCRACY OR IDEOCRACY.

early times.

The earliest political de- natural in Northern Africa, and here

HEOCRACY is a form of state which belongs to the Theocracy infancy of the human race. velopment took place in Asia and the first states are theocratic.

In the early youth of humanity the sense of dependence upon the divine being and upon the mysterious forces of nature was extremely vivid, and the influence of God or nature upon the life and education of men was more direct and powerful than it has since been. All ancient sagas and myths represent one or more gods as holding personal intercourse with mankind. Plato's account of the original condition of the Hellenic race agrees with the belief of all early peoples. He tells how Kronos, reflecting on the weakness and incapacity of the men of that time, ' placed as kings and princes not men but demons (daíμoves), beings of superior and divine origin.' Plato was himself in favour of this theocratic conception, and in his theory of the State he employs artifices to allure men back to the old belief in divine rule a.

In this belief in gods and demons1 as the true heads of the It involves State was inevitably involved the preponderant influence of

1 An extraordinary demonocratic state of the present day is described by A. H. Layard (Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i. pp. 269, etc.). The Jezidi, a tribe of the mountains of Mesopotamia, are subject to a priestly ruler, the great Scheik, and worship Satan, who they believe will one day be restored to his high estate in the celestial hierarchy.

the rule of

priests.