Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/489

 PRACTICAL TOLERANCE OF DISSENT. 4C7 least, wherein he would have been allowed to prosecute it for twenty -five years with safety and impunity; and that city was Athens. I have in a previous volume noted the respect for indi- fidual dissent of opinion, taste, and behavior, among one another, which characterized the Athenian population, and which Perikles puts in emphatic relief as a part of his funeral discourse. It was this established liberality of the democratical sentiment at Athens which so long protected the noble eccentricity of Sok- rates from being disturbed by the numerous enemies which he provoked : at Sparta, at Thebes, at Argos, Miletus, or Syracuse, his blameless life would have been insufficient as a shield, and his irresistible dialectic power would have caused him to be only the more speedily silenced. Intolerance is the natural weed of the human bosom, though its growth or development may be counteracted by liberalizing causes ; of these, at Athens, the most powerful was, the democratical constitution as there worked, in combination with diffused intellectual and aesthetical sensibil- ity, and keen relish for discourse. Liberty of speech was con- secrated, in every man's estimation, among the first of priv- ileges ; every man was accustomed to hear opinions, opposite to his own, constantly expressed, and to believe that others had a right to their opinions as well as himself. And though men would not, as a general principle, have extended such toleration to religious subjects, yet the established habit in reference to other matters greatly influenced their practice, and rendered them more averse to any positive severity against avowed dis- senters from the received religious belief. It is certain that there was at Athens both a keener intellectual stimulus, and greater freedom as well of thought as of speech, than in any other city of Greece. The long toleration of Sokrates is one example of this general fact, while his trial proves little, and his execution nothing, against it, as will presently appear. There must doubtless have been particular circumstances, of which we are scarcely at all informed, which induced his accus- ers to prefer their indictment at the actual moment, in spite of the advanced age of Sokrates. In the first place, Anytus, one of the accusers of Sokrates, appears to have become incensed against him on private grounds The son of Anytus had manifested interest in his conversation,