[Footnote 149: Cp. Tiele, _Outlines of the History of Religion_, Eng. tr. pp. 205, 207, and the present writer's _Short History of Freethought_, 2nd ed. i, 122-24.] [Footnote 150: The civilisations of North America and the English "dominions," while showing much diffusion of average culture, produce thus far relatively few of the highest fruits because of social immaturity and the smallness of their culture class.] [Footnote 151: Aristotle, _Politics_, ii, 12; v, 4.] [Footnote 152: Grote (ii, 150) argues that the need to move the cattle between high and low grounds promoted communication between "otherwise disunited villages." But that would be a small matter. The essential point is that, whatever the contacts, the communities remained alien to each other.] [Footnote 153: See Stubbs, _Const. Hist. of England_, 4th ed. iii, 632-33, as to England in the fifteenth century; and Michelet, Introd. to _Renaissance_ (vol. vii of _Hist. de France_).] [Footnote 154: See below, pt. vi, ch. i, § 2.] [Footnote 155: This discussion also goes back for at least two centuries. See Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_, Misc. iii, ch. i (vol. iii, pp. 137, 152).] [Footnote 156: Note, in this connection, the tactic of Mr. Balfour in the election struggle of 1909-10.] [Footnote 157: This was written, of course, before the recent uprising.] [Footnote 158: Cp. Professor Giles, _The Civilisation of China_, pp. 1-19, as to the little-recognised diversity of Chinese speech, stock, and climate.] [Footnote 159: Since these words were written China in turn has had her new birth, vindicating the doctrine above set forth.] PART II ECONOMIC FORCES IN ANCIENT HISTORY CHAPTER I ROMAN ECONOMIC EVOLUTION By singling out one set of the forces of aggregation and disintegration touched on in the foregoing general view, it is possible to get a more concrete idea of what actually went on in the Roman body politic. It is always useful in economic science, despite protests to the contrary, to consider bare processes irrespectively of ethical feeling; and the advantage accrues similarly in the "economic interpretation of history."[160] We have sufficiently for our purpose considered Roman history under the aspects of militarism and class egoism: it remains to consider it as a series of economic phenomena.