mind.  Greek union against the Persians was very imperfect; and against the Roman, the feeble leagues were wholly ineffective.  The influence of this dismembering environment still persists.  As ancient Greece was a complex of city states, modern Greece is a complex of separate districts, each of which holds chief place in the minds of its citizens, and unconsciously but steadily operates against the growth of a national spirit in the modern sense.[1380]

[Sidenote:  Types of mountain states.]

A mountain environment encourages political disunion in several forms.  Sometimes it favors the survival of a turbulent feudal nobility, based upon clan organization, as among the medieval Scotch, who were not less rebellious toward their own kings than toward the English conquerors.[1381] Feudal rule seems congenial to the mountaineer, whose conservative nature, born of isolation, clings to hereditary chiefs and a long established order.  Feudal communities and dwarf republics exist side by side in the northern Caucasus,[1382] attended by that primitive assertion of individual right, the blood feud.[1383] Often the two forms of government are combined, but the feudal element is generally only a dwindling survival from a remote past.  The little Republic of Andorra, which for a thousand years has preserved its existence in the protection of a high Pyrenean valley, is a self-governing community, organized strictly along the lines of a Tyrolese or Swiss commune; but the two viguiers or agents, who in some matters outrank the president, are official appointments tracing back to feudal days, when Andorra was a seigneurie of the Comte of Urgel.[1384] Tyrol offers a striking parallel to this.  In its local affairs it has in effect a republican form of government, enjoying as high degree of autonomy as any Swiss canton; but the great Brenner route, which could confer both power and wealth on its possessor, made the Tyrol an object of conquest to the feudal nobles of the early Middle Ages.  Their hereditary dominion is now vested in the archdukes of Austria, to whom the Tyrolese have shown unfailing fidelity, but from whom they have exacted complete recognition of their rights.[1385]

Tyrol’s neighbor Switzerland illustrates the pure form of commune, canton and republic, which is the logical result of a rugged mountain relief.  Here commune and canton are the real units of government.  In the federal power at Bern the Swiss peasant takes little interest, often not even knowing the name of the national president.  In the highest ranges a canton coincides with a mountain-rimmed valley—­Valais with the basin of the upper Rhone, Glarus with the upper Linth, Uri with the Reuss, Graubuenden with the upper Rhine, to which is joined by many pass routes the sparsely peopled Engadine, Ticino with the drainage basin of upper Lake Maggiore, Unterwalden with the southern drainage valleys of Lake Lucerne.  Where the mountains are lower, or where passes connect valleys