Even far more deeply did the lessons of Athenian political life act upon the practical character of the citizen, and train him to be a rational being submitting to the will of the majority, to which he himself contributed in debate, taking his turn at commanding as well as obeying, regarding the labours of office as his just contribution to the
public weal, regarding even the sacrifices he made as a privilege,—the outward manifestation of his loyalty to the State which had made him in the truest sense an aristocrat among men. Even when he commanded fleets or armies he did so as the servant of the State; and any attempt to redress private differences by personal assertion of his rights, other than the law provided, was regarded as essentially a violation of his civility and a return to barbarism. To carry arms for personal defence, to challenge an adversary to mortal combat, to take forcible possession of disputed property,—these things were greater outrages and greater violences to civilization at Athens than they are in most of the civilized countries of the nineteenth century.
Its splendid results
To have attained this high level, four centuries before Christ, without the aid of a really pure system of State religion, without the aid of that romantic sentiment which is so peculiar to Northern nations, is to have achieved a triumph which no man can gainsay. Had the Greeks not been subjected to this splendid training, which radiated from politics into art and letters, and which stimulated, though it did not create, that national genius that has since found no rival, all the glories of Hellenism, all the splendours of Alexander's successors, all the victories over Western barbarism would have been impossible.
appear to be essentially transitory,
from internal causes.
§ 59. But when all this is said, and however fully and eloquently it may be urged, the fact remains that the highest education is not all-powerful in
producing internal concord and external peace. There seems, as it were, a national strain exercised by a conquering and imperial democracy, which its members may sustain for a generation or two, but which cannot endure. The sweets of accumulated wealth and domestic comfort in a civilized and agreeable society become so delightful that the better classes will not keep up their own energy. All work, says Aristotle, to which men submit, is for the purpose of having leisure; and so there is a natural tendency in the cultivated classes to stand aside from politics, and allow the established laws to run in their now accustomed grooves. Hence the field of politics is left to the poorer, needier, more discontented classes, who turn public life into a means of glory and of gain, and set to work to disturb the State that they may satisfy their followers and obtain fuel to feed their own ambition. To such persons either a successful war upon neighbours, or an attack upon the propertied classes at home, becomes a necessity.
The case of America.
Let me state a modern case. The natural resources of America are still so vast that this inevitable result has not yet ensued. But whenever a limit has been reached and the pinch of poverty increases, we may expect it to arise in the United States. Even the Athenian democracy, when its funds were low and higher taxes were threatened, hailed with approval informations against rich citizens, in the hope that by confiscations of their property the treasury might be replenished.