But they do not
excite the speculative intellect, do not lead men to argue
speculative doctrines, or to question ancient principles. They, in
some material respects, improve the sheep within the fold; but they
do not help them or incline them to leap out of the fold.
The next question, therefore, is, Why did discussions in some cases
relate to prolific ideas, and why did discussions in other cases
relate only to isolated transactions? The reply which history
suggests is very clear and very remarkable. Some races of men at our
earliest knowledge of them have already acquired the basis of a free
constitution; they have already the rudiments of a complex polity--a
monarch, a senate, and a general meeting of citizens. The Greeks
were one of those races, and it happened, as was natural, that there
was in process of time a struggle, the earliest that we know of,
between the aristocratical party, originally represented by the
senate, and the popular party, represented by the 'general meeting.'
This is plainly a question of principle, and its being so has led to
its history being written more than two thousand years afterwards in
a very remarkable manner. Some seventy years ago an English country
gentleman named Mitford, who, like so many of his age, had been
terrified into aristocratic opinions by the first French Revolution,
suddenly found that the history of the Peloponnesian War was the
reflex of his own time.
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