Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/171

 BEGINNING OF THE FELOFONNEblAN WAR 149 interference of the state with individual liberty, as a general fact among the ancient Greek republics. There is no doubt that he has present to his mind a comparison with the extreme narrow- ness and rigor of Sparta, and that therefore his assertions of the extent of positive liberty at Athens must be understood as parti- ally qualified by such contrast. But even making allowance for this, the stress which he lays upon the liberty of thought and action at Athens, not merely from excessive restraint of law, but also from practical intolerance between man and man, and tyranny of the majority over individual dissenters in taste and pur- suit, deserves serious notice, and brings out one of those points in the national character upon which the intellectual development of the time mainly depended. The national temper was indul- gent in a high degree to all the varieties of positive impulses : the peculiar promptings in every individual bosom were allowed to manifest themselves and bear fruit, without being suppressed by external opinion, or trained into forced conformity with some assumed standard : antipathies against any of them formed no part of the habitual morality of the citizen. While much of the generating causes of human hatred was thus rendered inopera- tive, and while society was rendered more comfortable, more instructive, and more stimulating, all its germs of productive fruitful genius, so rare everywhere, found in such an atmosphere the maximum of encouragement. Within the limits of the law, assuredly as faithfully observed at Athens as anyAvhere in Greece, individual impulse, taste, and even eccentricity, were accepted with indulgence, instead of being a mark as elsewhere for the intolerance of neighbors or of the public. This remark- able feature in Athenian life will help us in a future chapter to explain the striking career of Sokrates, and it farther presents to us, under another face, a great part of that which the censors of Athens denounced under the name of " democratical license." The liberty and diversity of individual life in that city were offensive to Xenophon, 1 Plato, and Aristotle, attached either 1 Compare the sentiment of Xenophon, the precise reverse of that which is here laid down by Perikles, extolling the rigid discipline of Sparta, md denouncing the laxity of Athenian life (Xenophon, Memorah. iii, 5 15 iii, 12, 5). It is curious that the sentiment appears in this dialogue or pul