d from the
condition of the latter. The few women who did achieve freedom of
thought and action, and became the companions of cultivated men--the
Aspasias of antiquity--bought their freedom at a sad price.

So Rome is called a republic, and it is true that, during the first half
of her long history, freedom gradually broadened down from the patrician
class to the plebeian multitude. When Rome reached out, however, to the
mastery of the most impressive empire the world has seen, she never
dreamed of extending that freedom to the conquered populations. If she
did grant Roman citizenship to an occasional community, to enjoy the
rights and exercise the privileges of that citizenship, it was necessary
to journey to Rome. It was the city and the world: the city ruling the
world as subject.

The same principle holds with the republics developing at the close of
the middle age, in Italy, in the towns of the Hanseatic League and
elsewhere. Always the freedom achieved was for a city, a group or a
class, never for all the people. Our dream, on the contrary, is to take
all the men and women in the land, ultimately in the world, and help
them, through the free and cooperative activity of each with all the
rest, on toward life, liberty, happiness, intelligence--all the ends of
life that are worth while. If we demand life for ourselves, we ask it
only in harmony with the best life for all. We want no special
privilege, no benefit apart, bought at the price of the best welfare of
humanity. "We," unfortunately, does not yet mean all of us, but it does
signify an increasing multitude, rallying to this that is the standard
of to-morrow.

A third transformation, at least equally important with these, is in the
invention, for it is no less, of representative government. Political
thinkers, such as John Fiske, have tried to make us understand what this
invention means: we do not yet realize it. The development of
representative government is the cause, first of all, of the tremendous
expansion of the area over which we apply democracy. Plato, in the
_Laws_, limits the size of the ideal state--the one realizable in this
world--to 5040 citizens. Why? Well, the exact number has a certain
mystical significance, but the main reason is, Plato could not imagine a
much larger body of citizens than 5000 meeting together in public
assembly and fulfilling the functions of citizenship.

We have extended democracy over a hundred millions