It is said that the success of the armies of Rome is not fully accounted for, until one takes into account the constitution of this military body.  It united, in an incomparable degree, the different advantages of fixity and fluency.  Moderate in size, yet large enough to give the effect of mass, open in texture, yet compact in form, it afforded to every man room for individual prowess, while it left no man to his individual strength.  Each soldier leaned and rested upon the Legion, a body of six thousand men; yet around each was a space in which his movements might be almost as free, rapid, and individual as though he had possessed the entire field to himself.  The Macedonian Phalanx was a marvel of mass, but it was mass not penetrated with mobility; it could move, indeed could be said to have an existence, only as a whole; its decomposed parts were but debris.  The Phalanx, therefore, was terrible, the constituent parts of it imbecile; and the Battle of Cynocephalae finally demonstrated its inferiority, for the various possible exigencies of battle, to the conquering Legion.  The brave rabble of Gauls and Goths, on the other hand, illustrated all that private valor, not reposing upon any vaster and more stable strength, has power to achieve; but these rushing torrents of prowess dashed themselves into vain spray upon the coordinated and reposing courage of Rome.

The same perpetual opposites must concur to produce the proper form and uses of the State,—­though they here appear in a much more elevated form.  Rest is here known as Law, motion as Liberty.  In the true commonwealth, these, so far from being mutually destructive or antagonistic, incessantly beget and vivify each other; so that Law is the expression and guaranty of Freedom, while Freedom flows spontaneously into the forms of Justice.  Neither of these can exist, neither can be properly conceived of, apart from its correlative opposite.  Nor will any condition of mere truce, or of mere mechanical equilibrium, suffice.  Nothing suffices but a reciprocation so active and total that each is constantly resolving itself into the other.

The notion of Rousseau, which is countenanced by much of the phraseology, to say the least, of the present day, was, indeed, quite contrary to this.  He assumed freedom to exist only where law is not, that is, in the savage state, and to be surrendered, piece for piece, with every acknowledgment of social obligation.  Seldom was ever so plausible a doctrine equally false.  Law is properly the public definition of freedom and the affirmation of its sacredness and inviolability as so defined; and only in the presence of it, either express or implicit, does man become free.  Duty and privilege are one and the same, however men may set up a false antagonism between them; and accordingly social obligation can subtract nothing from the privilege and prerogative of liberty.  Consequently, the freedom which is defined as the negation of social