THE STATE Capitol, its little share of Roman sovereignty to direct its· whole life, 'One law, the -law 'imposed by Rome, governed the Empire; and that Empire did not represent a confederation of citizens : it was only a flock of subjects. Even now, the students of law and the authoritarians admire the unity of that Empire, the spirit of unity of those laws, the beauty-' they say-the harmony of that organisation. But the internal decomposition furthered by barbarian invasion-- the death of local life, henceforth unable to resist attacks from with- • out, and the gangrene spreading from the centre-pulled that empire to pieces, and on its ruins was established and developed a new civilisation, which is ours to-day. If, putting aside antique empires, we study the origin and development of that young· barbarian civilisation till the time when it 1 gave birth. to our modem States, ·we shall be able to grasp the essence of the State. We shall do it better than we should have done, if we had launched ourselves in the· study of the Roman Empire, or the empire of Alexander, or the despotic Eastern monarchies. In taking these powerful barbarian destroyers of the Roman Empire as a starting point, we can retrace the evolution of all civilisa• • tlon from its origin till it reaches the stage of the State. II. Most of the philosophers of the last century had conceived very elementary notions about the origin of societies. At the beginning, they said, men lived in small, isolated families, and perpetual war among these families represented the normal con• dition of,existence. But one fine day, perceiving the drawbacks of these endless struggles, they decided to form a society. A social contract was agreed upon among scattered families, who willingly submitted to an authority, which authority became the starting point and the initiative -0f all progress. Must I add, a'.syou have been told in school, that our present governments have impersonated the noble part of ~t of the earth, the pacifiers and civilisers of humanity? This conception, which was born at a time wheri little was known about the origin of man, prevailed in the last century; and we must say that in the hands of the encyclopedists and of Rousseau, the idea bf a "social contract" became a powerful weapon with which to fight roylilty and divine .right. Nevertheless, in spite of services it ma)' &averendered in the past, that theory must now be recognised as false, The fact is that all animals, save some beasts and birds of pn:y; lind a few species in course of extinction, live in societies. In the strt1ggle for existence it is the sociable species ,that gtt the bett~ of. the unsociable. In. every class of anirlia'ls they occupy the top of the ladder, and there can be no doubt that the first beings of human aspect already lived in societies. Man did not create society·; societt 11 Biblioteca Gino Bianco · A1~--ed 1,ew1:u t<'onactZiCih.e ~J. • Uiblioteca Gin~ .61en()G
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