Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/483

 CHAP, I. NEW BELIEFS PHILOSOPHY. 477 tiples and rules of human association. Plato, Crito, Antisthenes, Speusippus, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and many others wrote treatises on politics. They studied and examined ; the great problems of the oi"ganiza- tion of a state, of authority and obetlience, of obliga- tions and rights, were presented to all minds. Doubtless thought could not easily free itself from the bonds which habit had made for it. Plato still yielded, in certain points, to the empire of old ideas. The state which he imagines is still the ancient city : it is small ; it must not contain raore than five thou- sand membci-s. Its government is still regulated on ancient principles: liberty is unknown ia it; the object which the legblator proposes to himself is less the perfection of man than the security and grandeur of ihe association. The family, even, is almost suppressed, that it may not come into competition with the city : the state is the only proprietor ; it alone is free : the state nionc has a will ; only the state has a religion and a belief, and whoever docs not believe with it must perish. And yet in the midst of all this the new ideas appear. Plato proclaims, with Socrates and the Sophists, that the moral and political guide is in our- selves ; that tradition is nothing, that reason must be consulted, and that laws are just only when they eon- form to human nature. These ideas are stiil more precise in Aristotle. " The law," he says, '• is reason." He teaches that w# are to seek, not what conforms to the customs of ancestors, but what is good in itselfl He adds that, as time progresses, institutions should be modified. He puts aside respect for ancestors. " Our first ancestors, whetlier they came from the bosom of the earth, or ■sm'vived some deluge, resembled, in all probability,