Thus Morgan in his "Ancient Society" points out over and over again that the civilised state rests upon territorial and property marks and qualifications, and not upon a personal basis as did the ancient gens, or the tribe; and that the civilised government correspondingly takes on quite a different character and function from the simple organisation of the gens. He says (p. 124), "Monarchy is incompatible with gentilism." Also with regard to the relation of Property to Civilisation and Government he makes the following pregnant remarks (p. 505): "It is impossible to over-estimate the influence of property in the civilisation of mankind. It was the power that brought the Aryan and Semitic nations out of barbarism into civilisation. The growth of the idea of property in the human mind commenced in feebleness and ended in becoming its master passion. Governments and Laws are instituted with primary reference to its creation, protection and enjoyment. It introduced human slavery as an instrument in its production; and after the experience of several thousand years it caused the abolition of slavery upon the discovery that a freeman was a better property-making machine." And in another passage on the same subject, "The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim; because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy is the next higher plane. It will be a revival in a higher form of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes."

The institution of Government is in fact the evidence in social life that man has lost his inner and central control, and therefore must resort to an outward one. Losing touch with the inward Man—who is his true guide—he declines upon an external law, which must always be false. If each man remained in organic adhesion to the general body of his fellows, no serious dis-harmony could occur; but it is when this vital unity of the body politic becomes weak that it has to be preserved by artificial means, and thus it is that with the decay of the primitive and instinctive social life there springs up a form of government which is no longer the democratic expression of the life of the whole people; but a kind of outside authority and compulsion thrust upon them by a ruling class or caste.

Perhaps the sincerest, and often though not always the earliest, form of Government is Monarchy. The sentiment of human unity having been already partly but not quite lost, the people choose—in order to hold society together—a man to rule over them who has this sentiment in a high degree. He represents the true Man and therefore the people. This is often a time of extensive warfare and the formation of nations. And it is interesting in this connection to note that the quite early "Kings" or leaders of each nation just prior to the civilisation period were generally associated with the highest religious functions, as in the case of the Roman rex, the Greek basileus, the early Egyptian Kings, Moses among the Israelites, and Druid leaders of the Britons, and so on.

Later, and as the central authority gets more and more shadowy in each man, and the external attraction of Property greater, so it does in Society. The temporal and spiritual powers part company. The king—who at first represented the Divine Spirit or soul of society, recedes into the background, and his nobles of high degree (who may be compared to the nobler, more generous, qualities of the mind) begin to take his place. This is the Aristocracy and the Feudal Age—the Timocracy of Plato; and is marked by the appearance of large private tenures of land, and the growth of slavery and serfdom—the slavery thus outwardly appearing in society being the symbol of the inward enslavement of the man.

Then comes the Commercial Age—the Oligarchy or Plutocracy of Plato. Honour quite gives place to material wealth; the rulers rule not by personal or hereditary, but by property qualifications. Parliaments and Constitutions and general Palaver are the order of the day. Wage-slavery, usury, mortgages, and other abominations, indicate the advance of the mortal process. In the individual man gain is the end of existence; industry and scientific cunning are his topmost virtues.

Last of all the break-up is complete. The individual loses all memory and tradition of his heavenly guide and counterpart; his nobler passions fail for want of a leader to whom to dedicate themselves; his industry and his intellect serve but to minister to his little swarming desires. This is the era of anarchy—the democracy of Carlyle; the rule of the rabble, and mob-law; caucuses and cackle, competition and universal greed, breaking out in cancerous tyrannies and plutocracies—a mere chaos and confusion of society. For just as we saw in the human body, when the inner and positive force of Health has departed from it, that it falls a prey to parasites which overspread and devour it; so, when the central inspiration departs out of social life, does it writhe with the mere maggots of individual greed, and at length fall under the dominion of the most monstrous egotist who has been bred from its corruption.

Thus we have briefly sketched the progress of the symptoms of the "disease," which, as said before, runs much (though not quite) the same course in the various nations which it attacks. And if this last stage were really the end of all, and the true Democracy, there were indeed little left to hope for. No words of Carlyle could blast that black enough. But this is no true Democracy. Here in this "each for himself" is no rule of the Demos in every man, nor anything resembling it. Here is no solidarity such as existed in the ancient tribes and primæval society, but only disintegration and a dust-heap. The true Democracy has yet to come. Here in this present stage is only the final denial of all outward and class government, in preparation for the restoration of the inner and true authority. Here in this stage the task of civilisation comes to an end; the purport and object of all these centuries is fulfilled; the bitter experience that mankind had to pass through is completed; and out of this Death and all the torture and unrest which accompanies it, comes at last the Resurrection. Man has sounded the depths of alienation from his own divine spirit, he has drunk the dregs of the cup of suffering, he has literally descended into Hell; henceforth he turns, both in the individual and in society, and mounts deliberately and consciously back again towards the unity which he has lost.[14]

And the false democracy parts aside for the disclosure of the true Democracy which has been formed beneath it—which is not an external government at all, but an inward rule—the rule of the mass-Man in each unit-man. For no outward government can be anything but a make-shift—a temporary hard chrysalis-sheath to hold the grub together while the new life is forming inside—a device of the civilisation-period. Farther than this it cannot go, since no true life can rely upon an external support, and, when the true life of society comes, all its forms will be fluid and spontaneous and voluntary.

IV

And now, by way of a glimpse into the future—after this long digression what is the route that man will take?