ts of the
provincial or communal authority than to the Roman administration. Of
this truth we have had and shall have many occasions to take note.

For those of the conquered countries where political privileges had
been unknown for ages, and which lost nothing but the right of
destroying themselves by continual wars, the empire was such an era of
prosperity and well-being as they had never before experienced; and we
may add, without being paradoxical, that it was also for them an era
of liberty. On the one hand, a freedom of commerce and industry, of
which the Grecian state had no conception, became possible. On the
other hand, the new regime could not but be favorable to freedom of
thought. This freedom is always greater under a monarchy than under
the rule of jealous and narrow-minded citizens, and it was unknown in
the ancient republics. The Greeks accomplished great things without
it, thanks to the incomparable force of their genius; but we must not
forget that Athens had a complete inquisition....

There was, indeed, under the empire more than one arbitrary decree
against the philosophers, but it was always called forth by their
entering into political schemes. We may search in vain the Roman law
before Constantine for a single passage against freedom of thought;
and the history of the imperial government furnishes no instance of a
prosecution for entertaining an abstract doctrine. No scientific man
was molested. Men like Galen, Lucan, and Plotinus, who would have gone
to the stake in the Middle Age, lived tranquilly under the protection
of the law. The empire inaugurated liberty in this respect; it
extinguished the despotic sovereignty of the family, the town, and the
tribe, and replaced or tempered it by that of the state. But despotic
power is the more vexatious the narrower its sphere of action. The old
republics and the feudal system opprest individuals much more than did
the state. The empire at times persecuted Christianity most severely,
but at least it did not arrest its progress. Republics, however, would
have overcome the new faith. Even Judaism would have smothered it but
for the pressure of Roman authority. The Roman magistrates were all
that hindered the Pharisees from destroying Christianity at the
outset.

HIPPOLITE ADOLPHE TAINE

Born in 1828, died in 1893; studied medicine and in taking
his degree produced as a dissertation his notable "Essai sur
les Fables de La Fontain