This permanent dissociation of the City-States was only a more intractable form of the primary divisions of the districts. Thus in Attica itself the divisions of party largely followed the localities: "There were as many parties among them as there were different tracts of land in their country"--the mountain-dwellers being democratic, while the plain-dwellers were for an oligarchy, and the coast-dwellers sought a mixed government. (Plutarch, _Solon_, cc. 13, 29; Aristotle, _Polity of Athens_, c. 13.) See the question further discussed below, ch. iv, § 2 (_c_). Indeed, the fulness of the autonomous life attained by the separate cities was a psychological hindrance to their political union, given the primary geographical sunderance. Thus we have in the old Amphictyonic councils the evidence of a measure of peaceful political attraction among the tribes before the cities were developed;[133] yet on those ancient beginnings there was no political advance till the rise of formal federalism in the Ætolian and Achaian Leagues after the death of Alexander. And that federalism was not ethically higher than the spirit of the ancient Amphictyonic oath, preserved by Æschines. The balance of the forces of separateness and political wisdom is to be conceived in terms of a given degree of culture relatively to a given set of physical conditions. Happily the deadlock in question no longer subsists for civilised States. Again, there is now possible a scientific control of population, without infanticide, without vice, without abortion. There has been attained a degree of democratic stability and enlightenment which given peace, permits of a secure gradual extension of the principle of equality by sound machinery. And there is now accumulated a treasury of seminal knowledge which makes possible an endless intellectual progress, the great antiseptic of political decay, provided only that the foregoing conditions are secured. This is, in brief, the programme of progressive democracy. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 92: Cp. Mr. Godkin, _Problems of Modern Democracy_, 1896, pp. 327-28, as to the recent rise of class hatred in the United States.] [Footnote 93: Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, ii, 142.] [Footnote 94: "Freedom flourishes in colonies. Ancient usages cannot be preserved ... as at home.... Where every man lives by the labour of his hands, equality arises, even where it did not originally exist" (Heeren, _Pol. Hist. of Greece_, Eng. tr. p. 88. Cp. Bagehot, _Physics and Politics_, p. 99). Note, in this connection, the whole development of Magna Græcia. Sybaris was "perhaps in 510 B.C. the greatest of all Grecian cities" (Grote, part ii, ch. 37). As to the early strifes in the colonies, cp. Meyer, ii, 681.]