Besides, this experiment shows that there is little real advantage in systematically trampling down the native instincts of humanity in order to promote superiority in a particular direction. 11. The entirely spontaneous character of the Athenians made them, in general, the equal of the Spartans in military fame, and gloriously eminent in many other directions. But the various members of the Greek nation seem to have been made, by their intelligence and the earnestness, the completeness, of all their lines of development, the pioneers of humanity in their experiments. They exhausted all the capacities of a complete military education in an entire state, and presented the most perfect achievements of a genius that had no models to commence on, in poetry, in painting, in sculpture, in philosophy and in such elements of science as were possible to humanity in their day. It is worthy of remark that most of the Greek colonies, the Phenicians and their colonies, and a great part of the numerous nations in Italy became republican about the same time—as did the Romans later—and that those states which preserved hereditary monarchy, or tyrants—as those kings were called who were elected by the populace—had counterbalanced the individual despotism of the kingly office by various institutions that controlled and limited it. 12. At the period when history began to be carefully written and dates accurately given, civilization was under full career and rapidly moving westward. The Greeks had been struggling with the difficulties of the early times for more than a thousand years and had already begun to mature the institutions and to show the traits of character that afterwards made them so eminent and so useful in advancing the progress of mankind. The Tyrians, or commercial people of Phenicia, had formed the net-work of communication with all the parts of the earth then sufficiently civilized to produce anything which could be useful to the rest of the world, and Italy was alive with the energies of the primitive races, mainly Aryan—some of them transplanted from the East, and possessing many of the highest elements of the ancient culture—who fought the Romans with a vigor and persistence that contributed much to the discipline and strong development of that remarkable people, to whose instruction the Greek colonies in eastern Italy added not a little. From this point the advance of the center of development toward the western continent, and of mental preparation for more perfect ideals of government was continuous. A more complete view of this progress will be gained by considering the general events of each century apart, or in chronological order.