In Europe, originally the seat of Barbarism, the State had its commencement in efforts for the accomplishment of another object. Here it was not whole masses of the descendants of the Normal People who became intermixed with the savage Races, but only a few individuals banished from the realm of Culture already existing in Asia, perhaps with few followers and without hope of return; among whom I shall call to mind only Cecrops, Cadmus, Pelops,—many other names being now lost to History. Well skilled in all the Arts and Sciences of the ancient oriental world, provided with unwrought metals, with arms and implements of husbandry, perhaps with useful seeds, plants, and domestic animals,—they landed first on the coasts which at a later period bore the name of Greece, amid imbecile Savages who with difficulty maintained their existence, who perhaps had not yet abandoned cannibalism, and who, according to historical narrative, had certainly not yet abandoned human sacrifices;—in exactly the same way as an English Colony at the present day might, with better intentions, make a permanent settlement in New Zealand. By gifts; by the communication of many advantages, and instruments whereby the means of subsistence might be more easily acquired; by the storing up of food for all from one harvest to another;—these colonists attracted the Savages and gathered them around themselves; by their means erected towns, and in these held them together; introduced more humane manners, and established customs which gradually assumed the character of laws; and thus imperceptibly became their rulers. As these strangers came accompanied only by their own families, or at all events by few attendants, they could neither superintend nor unite around them large masses. Moreover there came, from time to time, other emigrants like themselves, who in the same manner founded states in other localities; and thus it happened that in this, the first cultivated region of Europe, there arose,
Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/213
