oligarchies had their own work, as we now know. They were imposing a
fashioning yoke; they were making the human nature which after times
employ. They were at their labours, we have entered into these
labours. And to the unconscious imitation which was their principal
tool, no impediment was so formidable as foreign intercourse. Men
imitate what is before their eyes, if it is before their eyes alone,
but they do not imitate it if it is only one among many present
things--one competitor among others, all of which are equal and some
of which seem better. 'Whoever speaks two languages is a rascal,'
says the saying, and it rightly represents the feeling of primitive
communities when the sudden impact of new thoughts and new examples
breaks down the compact despotism of the single consecrated code,
and leaves pliant and impressible man--such as he then is--to follow
his unpleasant will without distinct guidance by hereditary morality
and hereditary religion. The old oligarchies wanted to keep their
type perfect, and for that end they were right not to allow
foreigners to touch it. 'Distinctions of race,' says Arnold himself
elsewhere in a remarkable essay--for it was his last on Greek
history, his farewell words on a long favourite subject--'were not
of that odious and fantastic character which they have been in
modern times; they implied real differences of the most important
kind, religious and moral.' And after exemplifying this at length he
goes on, 'It is not then to be wondered at that Thucydides, when
speaking of a city founded jointly by Ionians and Dorians, should
have thought it right to add "that the prevailing institutions of
the two were Ionian," for according as they were derived from one or
the other the prevailing type would be different. And therefore the
mixture of persons of different race in the same commonwealth,
unless one race had a complete ascendancy, tended to confuse all the
relations of human life, and all men's notions of right and wrong;