lect03-第3章
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be seen in the official style of kings。 Of our own kings; King
John was the first who always called himself King of England。
(Freeman; 'Norman Conquest;' I。 82; 84。) His predecessors
commonly or always called themselves Kings of the English。 The
style of the king reflected the older tribal sovereignty for a
much longer time in France。 The title of King of France may no
doubt have come into use in the vernacular soon after the
accession of the dynasty of Capet; but it is an impressive fact
that; even at the time of the Massacre of St。 Bartholomew; the
Kings of France were still in Latin 'Reges Francorum;' and Henry
the Fourth only abandoned the designation because it could not be
got to fit in conveniently on his coins with the title of King of
Navarre; the purely feudal and territorial principality of the
Bourbons。 (Freeman; loc。 cit。) We may bring home to ourselves the
transformation of idea in another way。 England was once the
country which Englishmen inhabited。 Englishmen are now the people
who inhabit England。 The descendants of our forefathers keep up
the tradition of kinship by calling themselves men of English
race; but they tend steadily to become Americans and Australians。
I do not say that the notion of consanguinity is absolutely lost;
but it is extremely diluted; and quite subordinated to the newer
view of the territorial constitution of nations。 The blended
ideas are reflected in such an expression as 'Fatherland;' which
is itself an index to the fact that our thoughts cannot separate
national kinship from common country。 No doubt it is true that in
our day the older conception of national union through
consanguinity has seemed to be revived by theories which are
sometimes called generally theories of Nationality; and of which
particular forms are known to us as Pan…Sclavism and
Pan…Teutonism。 Such theories are in truth a product of modern
philology; and have grown out of the assumption that linguistic
affinities prove community of blood。 But wherever the political
theory of Nationality is distinctly conceived; it amounts to a
claim that men of the same race shall be included; not in the
same tribal; but in the same territorial sovereignty。
We can perceive; from the records of the Hellenic and Latin
city…communities; that there; and probably over a great part of
the world; the substitution of common territory for common race
as the basis of national union was slow; and not accomplished
without very violent struggles。 'The history of political ideas
begins;' I have said elsewhere; 'with the assumption that kinship
in blood is the sole possible ground of community in political
functions; nor is there any of those subversions of feeling which
we emphatically term revolutions so startling and so complete as
the change which is accomplished when some other principle
such as that; for instance; of local contiguity establishes
itself for the first time as the basis of common political
action。' The one object of ancient democracies was; in fact; to
be counted of kin to the aristocracies; simply on the ground that
the aristocracy of old citizens; and the democracy of new; lived
within the same territorial circumscription。 The goal was reached
in time both by the Athenian Demos and by the Roman Plebs; but
the complete victory of the Roman popular party was the source of
influences which have not spent themselves at the present moment;
since it is one of the causes why the passage from the Tribal to
the Territorial conception of Sovereignty was much more easy and
imperceptible in the modern than in the older world。 I have
before stated that a certain confusion; or at any rate
indistinctness of discrimination; between consanguinity and
common subjection to power is traceable among the rudiments of
Aryan thought; and no doubt the mixture of notions has helped to
bring about that identification of common nationality with common
allegiance to the King; which has greatly facilitated the
absorption of new bodies of citizens by modern commonwealths。 But
the majesty with which the memory of the Roman Empire surrounded
all kings has also greatly contributed to it; and without the
victory of the Roman Plebeians there would never have been; I
need hardly say; any Roman Empire。
The new knowledge which has been rapidly accumulating of late
years enables us to track precisely the same transmutation of
ideas amid the smaller groups of kinsmen settled on land and
forming; not Commonwealths; but Village…Communities。 The
historian of former days laboured probably under no greater
disadvantage than that caused by his unavoidable ignorance of the
importance of these communities; and by the necessity thus
imposed upon him of confining his attention to the larger
assemblages of tribesmen。 It has often; indeed; been noticed that
a Feudal Monarchy was an exact counterpart of a Feudal Manor; but
the reason of the correspondence is only now beginning to dawn
upon us; which is; that both of them were in their origin bodies
of assumed kinsmen settled on land and undergoing the same
transmutation of ideas through the fact of settlement。 The
history of the larger groups ends in the modern notions of
Country and Sovereignty; the history of the smaller in the modern
notions of Landed Property。 The two courses of historical
development were for a long while strictly parallel; though they
have ceased to be so now。
The naturally organised; self…existing; Village…Community can
no longer be claimed as an institution specially characteristic
of the Aryan races。 M。 de Laveleye; following Dutch authorities;
has described these communities as they are found in Java; and M
Renan has discovered them among the obscurer Semitic tribes in
Northern Africa。 But; wherever they have been examined; the
extant examples of the group suggest the same theory of its
origin which Mr Freeman ('Comparative Politics;' p。 103) has
advanced concerning the Germanic village…community or Mark; 'This
lowest political unit was at first; here (i。 e。 in England) as
elsewhere; formed of men bound together by a tie of kindred; in
its first estate natural; in a later stage either of kindred
natural or artificial。' The evidence; however; is now quite ample
enough to furnish us with strong indications not only of the mode
in which these communities began; but of the mode in which they
transformed themselves。 The world; in fact; contains examples of
cultivating groups in every stage; from that in which they are
actually bodies of kinsmen; to that in which the merest shadow of
consanguinity survives and the assemblage of cultivators is held
together solely by the land which they till in common。 The great
steps in the scale of transition seem to me to be marked by the
Joint Family of the Hindoos; by the House…Community of the
Southern Sclavonians; and by the true Village…Community; as it is