physical race two
different and incompatible spirits. Athens stood for human life in
its happiest development, gracious, cheerful and peaceful. She took no
serious interest except in the happiness, the imponderous riches, the
innocent and perfect beauties, the sweet leisures, the glories and the
arts of peace. When she went to war, it was as though in play, with
the smile still on her face, looking upon it as a more violent
pleasure than the rest, or as a duty joyfully accepted. She bound
herself down to no discipline, she was never ready, she improvised
everything at the last moment, having, as Pericles said, "with habits
not of labour but of ease and courage not of art but of nature, the
double advantage of escaping the experience of hardship in
anticipation and of facing them in the hour of need as fearlessly as
those who are never free from them."[5]

For Sparta, on the other hand, life was nothing but endless work, an
incessant strain, having no other objective than war. She was gloomy,
austere, strict, morose, almost ascetic, an enemy to everything that
excuses man's presence on this earth, a nation of spoilers, looters,
incendiaries and devastators, a nest of wasps beside a swarm of bees,
a perpetual menace and danger to everything around her, as hard upon
herself as upon others and boasting an ideal which may appear lofty,
if it can be man's ideal to be unhappy and the contented slave of
unrelenting discipline. On the other hand, she differed entirely from
those whom we are now fighting in that she was generally honest, loyal
and upright and showed a certain respect for the gods and their
temples, for treaties and for international law. It is none the less
true that, if she had from the beginning reigned alone or without
encountering a long resistance, Hellas would never have been the
Hellas that we know. She would have left in history but a precarious
trace of useless warlike virtues and of minor combats without glory;
and mankind would not have possessed that centre of light towards
which it turns to this day.

3

What was to be the issue of this war? Here begins the lesson which it
were well to study thoroughly. It would seem indeed as if, with the
first encounters in that conflict, as in our own, the inexplicable will
that governs nations was favourable to the less civilized; and in fact
Lacedaemon gained the upper hand, at least temporarily and sufficiently
to abuse her victory to such a degree that s