Primitive tribal life had elements of each of the three principles we
have named. But with discovery by some genius of the power of
organization for war the principle of dominance won, seemingly at a
flash, a decisive position. No power of steam or lightning has been so
spectacular and wide-reaching as the power which Egyptian, Assyrian,
Macedonian, Roman, and their modern successors introduced and
controlled. Political states owing their rise to military means
naturally followed the military pattern. The sharp separation between
ruler or ruling group and subject people, based on conquest, was
perpetuated in class distinction. Gentry and simple, lord and villein,
were indeed combined in exploitation of earth's resources, but
coöperation was in the background, mastery in the fore. And when
empires included peoples of various races and cultural advance the
separation between higher and lower became intensified. Yet though
submerged for long periods, the principle of coöperation has asserted
itself, step by step and it seldom loses ground. Beginning usually in
some group which at first combined to resist dominance, it has made its
way through such stages as equality before the law, abolition of
special privileges, extension of suffrage, influence of public
sentiment, interchange of ideas, toward genuine participation by all in
the dignity and responsibility of political power. It builds a Panama
Canal, it maintains a great system of education, and has, we may easily
believe, yet greater tasks in prospect. It may be premature to predict
its complete displacement of dominance in our own day as a method of
government, yet who in America doubts its ultimate prevalence?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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