The practical economic enterprises of Greek and Roman antiquity could not,even independently of any special adverseinfluences,have competed in magnitude of scale or variety of resource with those of modern times.The unadvancedcondition of physical science prevented a large application of the less obvious natural powers to production,or the extensiveuse of machinery,which has acquired such an immense development as a factor in modern industry.The imperfection ofgeographical knowledge and of the means of communication and transport were impediments to the growth of foreigncommerce.These obstacles arose necessarily out of the mere immaturity of the industrial life of the periods in question.Butmore deeply rooted impediments to a vigorous and expansive economic practical system existed in the characteristicprinciples of the civilisation of antiquity.Some writers have attempted to set aside the distinction between the ancient andmodern worlds as imaginary or unimportant,and,whilst admitting the broad separation between ourselves and the theocraticpeoples of the East,to represent the Greeks and Romans as standing on a substantially similar ground of thought,feeling,and action with the Western populations of our own time.But this is a serious error,arising from the same too exclusivepre-occupation with the cultivated classes and with the mere speculative intellect which has often led to an unduedisparagement of the Middle Ages.There is this essential difference between the spirit and life of ancient and of moderncommunities,that the former were organised for war,the latter during their whole history have increasingly tended to beorganised for industry,as their practical end and aim.The profound influence of these differing conditions on every form ofhuman activity must never be overlooked or forgotten.With the military constitution of ancient societies the institution ofslavery was essentially connected.Far from being an excrescence on the contemporary system of life,as it was in the modernWest Indies or the United States of America,it was so entirely in harmony with that life that the most eminent thinkersregarded it as no less indispensable than inevitable.It does,indeed,seem to have been a temporary necessity,and on thewhole,regard being had to what might have taken its place,a relative good.But it was attended with manifold evils.It led tothe prevalence amongst the citizen class of a contempt for industrial occupations;every form of production,with a partialexception in favour of agriculture,was branded as unworthy of a free man --the only noble forms of activity being thosedirectly connected with public life,whether military or administrative.Labour was degraded by the relegation of mostdepartments of it to the servile class,above whom the free artisans were but little elevated in general esteem.The producersbeing thus for the most part destitute of intellectual cultivation and excluded from any share in civic ideas,interests,orefforts,were unfitted in character as well as by position for the habits of skilful combination and vigorous initiation whichthe progress of industry demands.To this must be added that the comparative insecurity of life and property arising out ofmilitary habits,and the consequent risks which attended accumulation,were grave obstructions to the formation of largecapitals,and to the establishment of an effective system of credit.These causes conspired with the undeveloped state ofknowledge and of social relations in giving to the economic life of the ancients the limitation and monotony which contrastso strongly with the inexhaustible resource,the ceaseless expansion,and the thousandfold variety of the same activities inthe modern world.It is,of course,absurd to expect incompatible qualities in any social system;each system must beestimated according to the work it has to do.Now the historical vocation of the ancient civilisation was to be accomplished,not through industry,but through war,which was in the end to create a condition of things admitting of its own eliminationand of the foundation of a regime based on pacific activity.
THE GREEKS
This office was,however,reserved for Rome,as the final result of her system of conquest;the military activity of Greece,though continuous,was incoherent and sterile,except in the defence against Persia,and did not issue in the accomplishmentof any such social mission.It was,doubtless,the inadequacy of the warrior life,under these conditions,to absorb thefaculties of the race,that threw the energies of its most eminent members into the channel of intellectual activity,andproduced a singularly rapid evolution of the aesthetic,philosophic,and scientific germs transmitted by the theocraticsocieties.
In the Works and Days of Hesiod,we find an order of thinking in the economic sphere very similar to that of thetheocracies.With a recognition of the divine disposing power,and traditional rules of sacerdotal origin,is combinedpractical sagacity embodied in precept or proverbial saying.But the development of abstract thought,beginning from thetime of Thales,soon gives to Greek culture its characteristic form,and marks a new epoch in the intellectual history ofmankind.
The movement was now begun,destined to mould the whole future of humanity,which,gradually sapping the old hereditarystructure of theological convictions,tended to the substitution of rational theories in every department of speculation.Theeminent Greek thinkers,while taking a deep interest in the rise of positive science,and most of them studying the onlyscience --that of geometry --then assuming its definitive character,were led by the social exigencies which alwayspowerfully affect great minds to study with special care the nature of man and the conditions of his existence in society.
