ution.

The causes which ruined the Republic of Athens illustrate the connection
of ethics with politics rather than the vices inherent to democracy. A
State which has only 30,000 full citizens in a population of 500,000,
and is governed, practically, by about 3000 people at a public meeting,
is scarcely democratic. The short triumph of Athenian liberty, and its
quick decline, belong to an age which possessed no fixed standard of
right and wrong. An unparalleled activity of intellect was shaking the
credit of the gods, and the gods were the givers of the law. It was a
very short step from the suspicion of Protagoras, that there were no
gods, to the assertion of Critias that there is no sanction for laws. If
nothing was certain in theology, there was no certainty in ethics and no
moral obligation. The will of man, not the will of God, was the rule of
life, and every man and body of men had the right to do what they had
the means of doing. Tyranny was no wrong, and it was hypocrisy to deny
oneself the enjoyment it affords. The doctrine of the Sophists gave no
limits to power and no security to freedom; it inspired that cry of the
Athenians, that they must not be hindered from doing what they pleased,
and the speeches of men like Athenagoras and Euphemus, that the
democracy may punish men who have done no wrong, and that nothing that
is profitable is amiss. And Socrates perished by the reaction which they
provoked.

The disciples of Socrates obtained the ear of posterity. Their testimony
against the government that put the best of citizens to death is
enshrined in writings that compete with Christianity itself for
influence on the opinions of men. Greece has governed the world by her
philosophy, and the loudest note in Greek philosophy is the protest
against Athenian democracy. But although Socrates derided the practice
of leaving the choice of magistrates to chance, and Plato admired the
bloodstained tyrant Critias, and Aristotle deemed Theramenes a greater
statesman than Pericles, yet these are the men who laid the first stones
of a purer system, and became the lawgivers of future commonwealths.

The main point in the method of Socrates was essentially democratic. He
urged men to bring all things to the test of incessant inquiry, and not
to content themselves with the verdict of authorities, majorities, or
custom; to judge of right and wrong, not by the will or sentiment of
others, but by the light which God has set in