Political Science Of The State

INSTITUTIONS, LOCAL AND SELF GOVERNMENTS. 351
until they reach a certain maturity take a continually deeper
hold on the national life and feelings. They have, then, these
two qualities, the/raf, that of growth by the force of national
habit, the second, that of subsequent expansion, accommodation,
&&& playing in with other national institutions of similar ori-
gin. During all. this time law accepts of them, but, as it did
not originate, so it does not modify them. At length comes
a time, when, either from a change of national feeling, or from
the love of system seen in codification, or from change of po-
litical institutions, they are altered and accommodated to the
rest of the political fabric. It may be, also, that, at this ad-
vanced period of a nation's life, many new institutions some-
what similar are created by law, which may have the same
self-subsistent, permanent life as the old ones. This depends
on the fact whether a given nation is true to its earlier habits
or has lost them. In general it seems to take a longtime be-
fore the habits of institutional nations, as Dr. Lieber calls
them, can be forgotten or become inoperative. No new in-
stitutions are then found growing up in such countries,
but the old ones, remodelled or reproduced with some new
principles, may still continue.
The nations and races which have been most remarkable
for their institutional character are, Rome in its earlier days,
before law stiffened and froze national habits, England, with
some other portions of the Germanic race, India in early
times, while the Celtic and Sclavonic races in the political
sphere have had less of this character. Among the Greeks,
Athens in its later history shows little of it, and the same is
true of the Ionic race in general; but the Dorians, especially
Sparta, had the opposite character. Among the eras when
the institutional spirit had been most active within the historic
period, the middle ages all over western Europe deserve
especial mention. It was then, in a new form of society with
considerable vital force, that small territories were left to
themselves, without much intercourse with each other, to lay
the foundations of a new social and religious society on the