Nevertheless, such a condition can only subsist in deserts where those who try to till the soil cannot grow strong enough to maintain themselves against marauding herdsmen. Whenever agriculture yields better returns and makes the husbandman rich enough to support a protector, patriarchal life disappears. The fixed occupation of land turns a tribe into a state. Plato has given the classic account of such a passage from idyllic to political conditions. Growth in population and in requirements forces an Arcadian community to encroach upon its neighbours; this encroachment means war; and war, when there are fields and granaries to protect, and slaves and artisans to keep at their domestic labours, means fortifications, an army, and a general. And to match the army in the field another must be maintained at home, composed of judges, priests, builders, cooks, barbers, and doctors. Such is the inception of what, in the literal sense of the word, may be called civilisation. [Sidenote: Three uses of civilisation.] Civilisation secures three chief advantages: greater wealth, greater safety, and greater variety of experience. Whether, in spite of this, there is a real—that is, a moral—advance is a question impossible to answer off-hand, because wealth, safety, and variety are not absolute goods, and their value is great or small according to the further values they may help to secure. This is obvious in the case of riches. But safety also is only good when there is something to preserve better than courage, and when the prolongation of life can serve to intensify its excellence. An animal’s existence is not improved when made safe by imprisonment and domestication; it is only degraded and rendered passive and melancholy. The human savage likewise craves a freedom and many a danger inconsistent with civilisation, because independent of reason. He does not yet identify his interests with any persistent and ideal harmonies created by reflection. And when reflection is absent, length of life is no benefit: a quick succession of generations, with a small chance of reaching old age, is a beautiful thing in purely animal economy, where vigour is the greatest joy, propagation the highest function, and decrepitude the sorriest woe. The value of safety, accordingly, hangs on the question whether life has become reflective and rational. But the fact that a state arises does not in itself imply rationality. It makes rationality possible, but leaves it potential. [Sidenote: Its rationality contingent.]