* which leaves out historic customs and local diversities,
* which considers the basic human being,
* which treats individuals as units and the people as totals,
* which forcibly applies its general outlines to all special lives, and
* which glories in constituting, legislating, and administering by rule according to the measurements of square and compass.
At this date, in effect, the turn of mind, the talent, the ways of the Roman architect, his object, his resources and his means of execution, are already those of his French successor; the conditions around him in the Roman world are equivalent; behind him in Roman history the precedents, ancient and recent, are almost the same.
In the first place,[2330] there is, since emperor Augustus, the absolute monarchy, and, since the Antonines, administrative centralization the result of which is that
* all the old national and municipal communities are broken up or crushed out,
* all collective existences chilled or extinguished,
* local patriotism slowly worn away,