a serious fight with the former population or a more advanced division of labor. Conquerors and conquered were almost in the same stage of economic development, so that the economic basis of society remained undisturbed. Hence gentilism could preserve for many centuries an unchanged territorial character in the form of mark communes, and even rejuvenate itself in the nobility and patrician families of later years, or in the peasantry, as e. g. in Dithmarsia.[1]
The state, then, is by no means a power forced on society from outside; neither is it the "realization of the ethical idea," "the image and the realization of reason," as Hegel maintains. It is simply a product of society at a certain stage of evolution. It is the confession that this society has become hopelessly divided against itself, has entangled itself in irreconcilable contradictions which it is powerless to banish. In order that these contradictions, these classes with conflicting economic interests, may not annihilate themselves and society in a useless struggle, a power becomes necessary that stands apparently above society and has the function of keeping down the conflicts and maintaining "order." And this, power, the outgrowth of society, but assuming supremacy over it and becoming more and more divorced from it, is the state.
The state differs from gentilism in that it first divides its members by territories. As we have seen, the old bonds of blood kinship uniting the gentile bodies had become inefficient, because they were dependent on the condition, now no longer a fact, that all gentiles should live on a certain territory. The
- ↑ Author's note.
The first historian who had at least a vague conception of the nature of the gens was Niebuhr, thanks to his familiarity with the Dithmarsian families. The same source,
however, is also responsible for his errors.
