Our eloquent friends of the Paris dinner-party seem to have been strongly impressed with the excellence of enormous political aggregates.  We, too, approaching the subject from a different point of view, have been led to see how desirable it is that self-governing groups of men should be enabled to work together in permanent harmony and on a great scale.  In this kind of political integration the work of civilization very largely consists.  We have seen how in its most primitive form political society is made up of small self-governing groups that are perpetually at war with one another.  Now the process of change which we call civilization means quite a number of things.  But there is no doubt that on its political side it means primarily the gradual substitution of a state of peace for a state of war.  This change is the condition precedent for all the other kinds of improvement that are connoted by such a term as “civilization.”  Manifestly the development of industry is largely dependent upon the cessation or restriction of warfare; and furthermore, as the industrial phase of civilization slowly supplants the military phase, men’s characters undergo, though very slowly, a corresponding change.  Men become less inclined to destroy life or to inflict pain; or—­to use the popular terminology which happens here to coincide precisely with that of the Doctrine of Evolution—­they become less brutal and more humane.  Obviously then the prime feature of the process called civilization is the general diminution of warfare.  But we have seen that a general diminution of warfare is rendered possible only by the union of small political groups into larger groups that are kept together by community of interests, and that can adjust their mutual relations by legal discussion without coming to blows.  In the preceding lecture we considered this process of political integration as variously exemplified by communities of Hellenic, of Roman, and of Teutonic race, and we saw how manifold were the difficulties which the process had to encounter.  We saw how the Teutons—­at least in Switzerland, England, and America—­had succeeded best through the retention of local self-government combined with central representation.  We saw how the Romans failed of ultimate success because by weakening self-government they weakened that community of interest which is essential to the permanence of a great political aggregate.  We saw how the Greeks, after passing through their most glorious period in a state of chronic warfare, had begun to achieve considerable success in forming a pacific federation when their independent career was suddenly cut short by the Roman conqueror.