In fact the most remarkable peculiarity in the Greek character was a certain centrifugal force, or abhorrence of centralisation, which presented insurmountable obstacles to the union of the whole Hellenic nation under one head. The inhabitants of ancient Italy exhibited on this point an entirely dissimilar character. Though differing from each other widely in manners, customs and laws, they still possessed so much of affinity as enabled them successively to unite themselves with Rome, and melt into one great people. The causes lay in their moral and intellectual character: possessing little genius or imagination, but much good sense, they experienced less keenly the misery of inferiority, the anguish of defeat, the tortures of submission, and calculated more coolly the advantages of protection and tranquillity, and all the other benefits of living under a strong government. Where the masses are but slightly impregnated with the fire of genius they are naturally disposed to amalgamation, and form a vast body necessarily subjected to one head. But where a nation is everywhere pervaded and quickened by genius, where imagination is an universal attribute, where to soar is as natural as to breathe, where the principal enjoyment of life is the exercise of power, where men hunger and thirst more for renown than for their daily bread, where life itself without these imaginary delights is insipid and despicable, no force, while the vigour of the national character continues unbroken, can erect a central government, or achieve extensive conquests, that is, subject one part of the nation to the sway of the other. And perhaps it may be found when we shall farther have perfected the science of government, that in politics as in physics the largest bodies are not the most valuable, or the most difficult to be shattered. The diamond resists when the largest rock yields. The true tendency of civilisation, therefore, is to reduce unwieldy empires into compact bodies, which the light of education can penetrate and render luminous. Vast empires are but opaque masses of ignorance. From precisely the same causes arose the peculiar notions of the Greeks on the subject of government; that is, the citizens of each state applied to one another the principle which regulated the conduct of communities. Every man experienced an aversion to yield obedience to his neighbour, every man was ambitious to rule; but, as this was impossible, it became necessary to invent some means by which public business could be carried on without offering too much violence to the national character. Hence the origin of republicanism and the establishment of commonwealths, in which the sovereignty was acknowledged to reside in the body of the people, and where such of the citizens as by abilities, rank, friends, were qualified, might rule in vicarious succession.