The Summary Cause for the
Stability or Downfall of Human Societies
CHAPTER 9
Continuation: an explanation of conquests
59. We have to note in passing that not all peoples undergo at the same time the various stages we have distinguished. Some move more quickly than others; some stay at one stage longer than others. As a result, it is possible to find contemporaneous peoples, one of which is at the first stage, while another has already arrived at the third or fourth stage. And this explains conquests.
It is in fact evident that any nation in the first or second of the stages we have posited possesses a great advantage over another people already at the third or fourth stage. Let us take for example the fall of the western Roman Empire at the hands of the Germanic peoples, as described by a recent author in words which serve my purpose exactly. He notes with some precision that the Germanic nations did not conquer the Roman world with overpowering force, as is commonly supposed. They possessed neither a huge population, nor political institutions, nor military discipline; they conquered because they existed in the first centuries of our era, that is, at the height and decadence of other civilisations around the Mediterranean. At that time, the Germanic peoples experienced the same social state that the others had undergone eight or ten centuries previously. In other words, they were at the stage of city-states, that is of tiny, separate peoples who came together for short periods in constantly changing federations.(33)
This is exactly the point I am making when I say that civil society, although still not fully constituted, cannot lose sight of its being. On the contrary, this is the one thing present to the masses at this period of time, and their only driving force.
Balbo also notes wisely that even relative to force and natural vigour the advantage remained with the Mediterranean nations:
The Pelasgic, Celtic and Germanic peoples were always defeated by the Mediterranean nations who, despite enjoying the same civic state as their foes, pushed these back and kept them locked up in their wildernesses. They were only conquered when the other peoples had progressed to a further state of civilisation which, however, presented deficiencies and difficulties. At this point, the more developed peoples experienced all the disadvantages of their new position without having acquired any of the advantages incompatible with a period in which the process of civilisation was so striking.(34)
60. The deficiency and incapacities of this new state of civilisation will be found to consist, in my well-considered opinion, in the fact that peoples had arrived at conditions in which the immediate good for which they were working was no longer existence or the glory of their country or even something accessory to the social good, but the good of the individual. The Germans on the other hand, although at a much lower stage of development, were in a condition where the nature of the matter in hand offered them the existence and glory of their association as the object to be attained.
This is precisely the state described by our author when he speaks of the Germans and other peoples. Let us listen once more to his accurate, astute comments. Speaking of the Germans, he says:
Other than minor moral corruption, the condition in which the city-states remained gave them immense advantages over populations which had long since made further progress. In the city-state every citizen was always a soldier (Heerman or Wehrmann). Amongst his own people he was free, as we said, but outside his people he was a tyrant, and thus forced to carry arms in war and peace. In this social state, war is the natural condition of human beings, and there is no doubt that such was the case in the ancient world — another difference between the ancient and modern worlds. For this reason warlike qualities such as courage, virtus, and love of one’s city were the principal, if not the only virtues in antiquity. So, too, constant deterioration was the fate of ancient societies which gradually distanced themselves from the city-state and from a state of constant warfare. The supreme aim and success of the ancient legislators, such as Lycurgus and Romulus, was to preserve the nation as a city-state, and to pursue constant warfare. On all sides, `outsider’ and `foreigner’ were syn-onymous. The Jewish enmity for everyone other than their own people was a factor common to all nations; everyone divided the world into two parts only: his own people or city, and the other peoples, peoples in general.
61. He goes on:
Germany, which had remained at this stage, conquered not only the Romans, who had unfortunately progressed from that stage, but also the Huns and other Asian nations which had either not come so far or had themselves burst forth at the time of the immense empire of Attila and his predecessors.(35)
62. We can conclude, therefore, that the law according to which our criterion of substance and accident is in fact observed relative to the masses or multitudes `consists in a constant deterioration (which points to the truth of the saying: "the older the world, the worse it gets") or in a succession of different states of a nation as it passes in its early years from complete, faithful observance of the rule to gradual, constant neglect and eventual total forgetfulness of it.’
Notes
(33) Della Letturatura negli XI primi secoli dell'Era Cristiana, Lettere di C. Balbo, Turin, 1836, Lett. 2.
(34) Ibid.
(35) Ibid.