eader of Thucydides can doubt that
as the struggle intensified Athenian civility diminished: yet, when we
remember that even in the throes of war the right of the individual to
live and speak freely was not lost, that, on the contrary, during the
war, came forth some of the finest and freest criticism with which the
world has ever been blest, we shall incline to suspect that even in her
decline Athens was decidedly more civilized than most states at their
apogee.

[Greek: ho de anexetastos bios ou biotos], said Socrates--a life
unsifted is a life unspent. Because the Athenians really believed this,
because they saw dimly that good states of mind, not wealth nor comfort
nor power nor prestige--which are but means--but states of mind, which
alone are good in themselves, are the proper end of existence, they
refused to sacrifice individual liberty to any god of efficiency. It was
to the mind of the individual they looked for absolute good: the state
was but a means. Therefore at Athens, after twenty years of stultifying
war, the right of the individual to free expression and self-development
was scrupulously respected. In this truly liberal atmosphere vivid and
original characters grew and flourished, thought and felt, and of their
thoughts and feelings have left such record as still charms and
tantalizes less fortunate generations. This belief in personal liberty,
this respect for the individual mind as the sole source of truth and
beauty, made possible Athens, a small short-lived state in the distant
past, an ideal towards which the best minds are ever looking back, the
glory and grand achievement of the Western world.[11]

Our enthusiasm for that Athenian spirit, which respected art and gave
free rein to criticism even at the most desperate moment of the city's
history, has carried us a little, but only a little, away from the
matter in hand--the political ideas of the _Lysistrata_. Political
wisdom, like human folly, seems to obey a law known to men of science as
"the Conservation of Energy"--quantity and quality are permanent, form
alone changes. It is the Aristophanic method that differs so greatly
from that of most modern satirists. For Aristophanes does not confine
himself to driving the blade of his wit into the rotten parts of a bad
case; he does not score intellectual points only. His method is more
fundamental. A clever controversialist can always find joints in the
harness of his foe. When Mr. Shaw meets Mr.