each man's reason and
conscience. He proclaimed that authority is often wrong, and has no
warrant to silence or to impose conviction. But he gave no warrant to
resistance. He emancipated men for thought, but not for action. The
sublime history of his death shows that the superstition of the State
was undisturbed by his contempt for its rulers.

Plato had not his master's patriotism, nor his reverence for the civil
power. He believed that no State can command obedience if it does not
deserve respect; and he encouraged citizens to despise their government
if they were not governed by wise men. To the aristocracy of
philosophers he assigned a boundless prerogative; but as no government
satisfied that test, his plea for despotism was hypothetical. When the
lapse of years roused him from the fantastic dream of his Republic, his
belief in divine government moderated his intolerance of human freedom.
Plato would not suffer a democratic polity; but he challenged all
existing authorities to justify themselves before a superior tribunal;
he desired that all constitutions should be thoroughly remodelled, and
he supplied the greatest need of Greek democracy, the conviction that
the will of the people is subject to the will of God, and that all civil
authority, except that of an imaginary state, is limited and
conditional. The prodigious vitality of his writings has kept the
glaring perils of popular government constantly before mankind; but it
has also preserved the belief in ideal politics and the notion of
judging the powers of this world by a standard from heaven. There has
been no fiercer enemy of democracy; but there has been no stronger
advocate of revolution.

In the _Ethics_ Aristotle condemns democracy, even with a property
qualification, as the worst of governments. But near the end of his
life, when he composed his _Politics_, he was brought, grudgingly, to
make a memorable concession. To preserve the sovereignty of law, which
is the reason and the custom of generations, and to restrict the realm
of choice and change, he conceived it best that no class of society
should preponderate, that one man should not be subject to another, that
all should command and all obey. He advised that power should be
distributed to high and low; to the first according to their property,
to the others according to numbers; and that it should centre in the
middle class. If aristocracy and democracy were fairly combined and
balanced agains