Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/172

 150 HISTORY OF GREECE. to the monotonous drill of Sparta, or to some other ideal stand- ard, which, though much better than the Spartan in itself, they were disposed to impress upon society with a heavy-handed uniformity. That liberty of individual action, not merely from the over-restraints of law, but from the tyranny of jealous opinion, such as Perikles depicts in Athens, belongs more natur- ally to a democracy, where there is no select one or few to receive worship and set the fashion, than to any other form of govern- ment. But it is very rare even in democracies : nor can we dissemble the fact that none of the governments of modern times, democratical, aristocratical, or monarchical, presents any thing like the picture of generous tolerance towards social dis- sent, and spontaneity of individual taste, which we read in the speech of the Athenian statesman. In all of them, the intoler- ance of the national opinion cuts down individual character to one out of a few set types, to which every person, or every family, is constrained to adjust itself, and beyond which all exceptions meet either with hatred or with derision. To impose upon men such restraints either of law or of opinion as are requisite for the security and comfort of society, but to encourage rather than repress the free play of individual impulse subject to those limits, is an ideal, which, if it was ever approached at Athens, has certainly never been attained, and has indeed comparatively been little studied or cared for in any modern society. Connected with this reciprocal indulgence of individual diver- sity, was not only the hospitable reception of all strangers at Athens, which Perikles contrasts with the xenelasy or jealous expulsion practised at Sparta, but also the many-sided activity, bodily and mental, visible in the former, so opposite to that nar- row range of thought, exclusive discipline of the, body and never- ending preparation for war, which formed the system of the latter. His assertion that Athens was equal to Sparta, even in her own solitary excellence, efficiency on the field of battle, is doubtless untenable ; but not the less impressive is his sketch of that multitude of concurrent impulses which at this same time agitated and impelled the Athenian mind, the strength In the mouth of the younger Perikles (illegitimate son of the great Perikles) in a dialoue with Sokrates.