If, therefore, all the first men had the strict morality of families, they would no more have permitted the rise of SEMI-moral nations anywhere in the world than the Romans would have permitted them to arise in Italy.
He argues that if early humans had strong family morals, they would not have allowed the rise of less moral nations.
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More from Walter Bagehot
The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.
At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.
These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.
It is natural that those who by special and admirable culture have come to look at all things upon the artistic side, should start back from these queer peculiarities.
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