But domestic security, which is reached by constant
foreign aggression, results inevitably in a huge unwieldy form of
imperial political organization which is obliged by the logic of its
situation to seek universal dominion. The Romans made the great attempt
to establish a dominion of this kind; and while their Empire could not
endure, because their military organization destroyed in the end the
very foundation of internal order, they bequeathed to civilization a
political ideal and a legal code of inestimable subsequent value.
As long as men were obliged to choose between a communal or an imperial
type of political organization,--which was equivalent merely to a choice
between anarchy and despotism,--the problem of combining internal order
with external security seemed insoluble. They needed a form of
association strong enough to defend their frontiers, but not
sufficiently strong to attack their neighbors with any chance of
continued success; and such a state could not exist unless its unity
and integrity had some moral basis, and unless the aggressions of
exceptionally efficient states were checked by some effective
inter-state organization.
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