t each other, he thought that none would be interested to
disturb the serene majesty of impersonal government. To reconcile the
two principles, he would admit even the poorer citizens to office and
pay them for the discharge of public duties; but he would compel the
rich to take their share, and would appoint magistrates by election and
not by lot. In his indignation at the extravagance of Plato, and his
sense of the significance of facts, he became, against his will, the
prophetic exponent of a limited and regenerated democracy. But the
_Politics_, which, to the world of living men, is the most valuable of
his works, acquired no influence on antiquity, and is never quoted
before the time of Cicero. Again it disappeared for many centuries; it
was unknown to the Arabian commentators, and in Western Europe it was
first brought to light by St. Thomas Aquinas, at the very time when an
infusion of popular elements was modifying feudalism, and it helped to
emancipate political philosophy from despotic theories and to confirm it
in the ways of freedom.

The three generations of the Socratic school did more for the future
reign of the people than all the institutions of the States of Greece.
They vindicated conscience against authority, and subjected both to a
higher law; and they proclaimed that doctrine of a mixed constitution,
which has prevailed at last over absolute monarchy, and still has to
contend against extreme Republicans and Socialists, and against the
masters of a hundred legions. But their views of liberty were based on
expediency, not on justice. They legislated for the favoured citizens of
Greece, and were conscious of no principle that extended the same rights
to the stranger and the slave. That discovery, without which all
political science was merely conventional, belongs to the followers of
Zeno.

The dimness and poverty of their theological speculation caused the
Stoics to attribute the government of the universe less to the uncertain
design of gods than to a definite law of nature. By that law, which is
superior to religious traditions and national authorities, and which
every man can learn from a guardian angel who neither sleeps nor errs,
all are governed alike, all are equal, all are bound in charity to each
other, as members of one community and children of the same God. The
unity of mankind implied the existence of rights and duties common to
all men, which legislation neither gives nor takes away. T