On the other hand, the smallness of the independent city, as a political aggregate, made it of little or no use in diminishing the liability to perpetual warfare which is the curse of all primitive communities. In a group of independent cities, such as made up the Hellenic world, the tendency to warfare is almost as strong, and the occasions for warfare are almost as frequent, as in a congeries of mutually hostile tribes of barbarians. There is something almost lurid in the sharpness of contrast with which the wonderful height of humanity attained by Hellas is set off against the fierce barbarism which characterized the relations of its cities to one another. It may be laid down as a general rule that in an early state of society, where the political aggregations are small, warfare is universal and cruel. From the intensity of the jealousies and rivalries between adjacent self-governing groups of men, nothing short of chronic warfare can result, until some principle of union is evolved by which disputes can be settled in accordance with general principles admitted by all. Among peoples that have never risen above the tribal stage of aggregation, such as the American Indians, war is the normal condition of things, and there is nothing fit to be called _peace_,--there are only truces of brief and uncertain duration. Were it not for this there would be somewhat less to be said in favour of great states and kingdoms. As modern life grows more and more complicated and interdependent, the Great State subserves innumerable useful purposes; but in the history of civilization its first service, both in order of time and in order of importance, consists in the diminution of the quantity of warfare and in the narrowing of its sphere. For within the territorial limits of any great and permanent state, the tendency is for warfare to become the exception and peace the rule. In this direction the political careers of the Greek cities assisted the progress of civilization but little.