VIII

The exclusiveness of the ancient societies which the Roman Empire and the new ethics combined to break down is almost inconceivable to-day. Each division of the politico-social hierarchy, as already pointed out, was more or less of a closed corporation, a masonic guild, the members of which were bound to each other by the closest of ties, but by ties which had no validity beyond that division. Special religious forms bound a man to his family, others to his clan, others to his tribe, others again to his city, others yet again through them generally of a less intimate and sacred character to the group of cities (the country or kingdom) to which he belonged. There, however, all duty, all sentiment of a common humanity came to an abrupt ending. Beyond the state as federated group of cities, as kingdom or empire, all were Gentiles, outer barbarians, heathen. Such was the inseparability of morality and religion from politics, that a human being outside the political boundary was altogether outside the pale of human relations. The consequence of this negative attitude of the ancient racial morality towards the outer world was rich in consequences – warfare and slavery directly flowed from it. The conquering power had no duties towards the conquered, and hence its one idea was to utilise them in the interest of its own commonwealth, into which they were therefore introduced. The original political exclusiveness thus paved the way to a social exclusiveness, to the existence of a population within the commonwealth towards which its members owed no duties, and which of course had no rights. Exclusiveness, political and social, may be described as the negative element in the system of the ancient world, to the development of which it was indeed necessary, but which, nevertheless, proclaimed its inevitable fall in the very fact of that development – ancient society was strangled by its exclusiveness.