DEMOCRATIC CULTURE 271 



Plato's thought was centc r ,1 , m the educational 

 and moral needs of the city-state of Athens. He was 

 apprehensive that the city was becoming corrupted 

 through the wantonness and lack of principle of th 

 Athenian youth. He strove to rebuild on reasoned 

 foundations the sense of social obligation and re- 

 sponsibility which had in the earlier days < - 

 rested upon faith in the existence of the gods. As a 

 conservative he hoped to restore the ancient Athenian 

 feeling for duty and moral worth, and he even en- 

 vied some of the educational practices of the rival 

 city-state Sparta, by which the citizen was sul 

 nated to the state. The novel feature of Plato's ped- 

 agogy was the plan to educate the directing classes, 

 men disciplined in his own philosophical and ethical 

 conceptions. He was, in fact, an intellectual aristo- 

 crat, and spoke of democracy in very ironical terms, 

 as the following sentences will show : 



" And thus democracy comes into being after the 

 poor have conquered their opponents. . . . And now 

 what is their manner of life, and what sort of a gov- 

 ernment have they? For as the government is, such 

 will be the man. ... In the first place, are they 

 not free? and the city is full of freedom and frank- 

 ness a man may do as he likes. . . . And where 

 freedom is, the individual is clearly able to order his 

 own life as he pleases ? . . . Then in this kind of 

 State there will be the greatest variety of human na- 

 tures ? . . . This then will be the fairest of States, 

 and will appear the fairest, being span-l. <1 with the 

 manners and characters of mankind, like an em- 

 broidered robe which is spangled with every sort 

 of flower. And just as women and children think 



