It is scarcely necessary to point out the fact that aside from mythology there is no specific theorizing -with respect to social and political i relations in primitive society. In that period there is only one theory as to the foundations and justification of the existing social order, namely, that it is the only "safe order. Its perpetuation unaltered and unimpaired is the only guarantee of relative immunity from the dangers lurking in the unknown. In primitive society, as among modern conservatives, there is a veritable sanctity in the existing order which precludes the possibility of any critical examination of its origin and justification.
Democracy in Early Political Society.— If any position of historical sociology can be regarded as established it is that political soci ety and the state originated through the amal gamation of tribal groups as a result of the in cessant wars waged in what Bagehot has called the "nation-making age.' In the highly auto• cratic and hierarchical caste society which then developed and which characterized early po litical society there was, of course, not the slightest approximation to anything democratic in any field of social relations. In no other stage has the individual counted for so little and been so circumscribed in his liberty as in the period of the formation of states and the development of early despotisms. The facts almost justify Hegel's famous dogma that in this period only the despot was free.
Early political society is characterized by as complete an absence of democracy in theory as in practice. The only expenditure of politi cal thought was in justifying the existing regime on the basis of the sanctions of a unique revealed religion or the superior wisdom of ancestors. Existing institutions were held to be a part of the divine order as in primitive society they had been regarded as the source of the "luck' of the social group.
Democracy During Classical Times.— It is impossible to make any sweeping statement as to the degree of democracy realized in an cient Greece as the situation varied greatly in different periods in both Athens and Sparta. The radical transformations of Greek govern ments from tyranny to aristocracy and from aristocracy to the so-called democracy were so frequent as to give rise to the famous Platonic and Aristotelian theory of the cycles of gov ernmental changes. True democracy was not prominent in Hellenic society. Even Athens,
the most liberally inclined of the Greek city states, at the period of its most democratic or ganization could scarcely be regarded as a de mocracy in the modern application of the term. While, as Mr. Zimmern has pointed out, there has been a tendency to exaggerate the number of staves in Athens, there can he no doubt that there was never a time in Athenian history when a majority of the population was not ex cluded from participation in the life of the state. Greek "democracy' meant relative so vial and political equality only among the citizen class — the class, which in the opinion of Aristotle, was "born to rule.° Within this privileged citizen class, however, Athenian de mocracy made the closest approximation in an tiquity to a democratic control of group ac tivities.
In republican Rome •the same conception of exclusiveness in the citizenship existed as had prevailed in Greece. The large numbers of slaves and foreigners were e luded from the •litical life of the state and within the citizen • • .y itself there was less of a democratic con trol of political activities than had existed in Athens. Despite the gains made by the plebeians in the 4th century s.c. and the later at tempts of the Gracchi to break down the domi nation of the aristocratic governing clique, the government of Rome drifted steadily into the exclusive control of the autocratic sena torius' and from that into the principate and i the empire. The sodalities or industrial asso ciations were the only approximation to social democracy, and they were discouraged and pro hibited by the government. Duruig the im perial period a slight movement toward de mocracy might be detected in the reduction of the number of slaves through manumission and the extinction of many of the sources of sup ply, but this slight symptom was more than offset by the growth of imperial despotism, the increase of plutocracy and the extinction of the curiate or middle class through the dispropor tionate burdens of taxation Imposed upon it. As a result the middle class, the lower class freemen and the slaves were all assimilated into one semi-free class — the so-called tcolonate." Classical antiquity, then, never brought real de mocracy in the political, social or economic realms. It passed, leaving a more decided con dition of inequality than it had received from the primitive tribal society with which it had started.