2 “Must we really,” he asked, “give credit to that oft-repeated assertion that democracy is the kind nurse of genius, and that high literary excellence has flourished with her prime and faded with her decay? Liberty, it is said, is all-powerful to feed the aspirations of high intellects, to hold out hope, and keep alive the flame of mutual rivalry and ambitious struggle for the highest place.
3 “Moreover, the prizes which are offered in every free state keep the spirits of her foremost orators whetted by perpetual exercise;[1] they are, as it were, ignited by friction, and naturally blaze forth freely because they are surrounded by freedom. But we of to-day,” he continued, “seem to have learnt in our childhood the lessons of a benignant despotism, to have been cradled in her habits and customs from the time when our minds were still tender, and never to have tasted the fairest and most fruitful fountain of eloquence, I mean liberty. Hence we develop nothing but a fine genius for flattery.
[Footnote 1: Comp. Pericles in Thuc. ii., ἆθλα γὰρ οἷς κεῖται ἀρετῆς μέγιστα τοῖς δὲ καὶ ἄνδρες ἄριστα πολιτεύουσιν.]
4 “This is the reason why, though all other faculties are consistent with the servile condition, no slave ever became an orator; because in him there is a dumb spirit which will not be kept down: his soul is chained: he is like one who has learnt to be ever expecting a blow. For, as Homer says--
5 “’The day of slavery Takes half our manly worth away.’[2]
“As, then (if what I have heard is credible), the cages in which those pigmies commonly called dwarfs are reared not only stop the growth of the imprisoned creature, but absolutely make him smaller by compressing every part of his body, so all despotism, however equitable, may be defined as a cage of the soul and a general prison.”
6 My answer was as follows: “My dear friend, it is so easy, and so characteristic of human nature, always to find fault with the present.[3] Consider, now, whether the corruption of genius is to be attributed, not to a world-wide peace,[4] but rather to the war within us which knows no limit, which engages all our desires, yes, and still further to the bad passions which lay siege to us to-day, and make utter havoc and spoil of our lives. Are we not enslaved, nay, are not our careers completely shipwrecked, by love of gain, that fever which rages unappeased in us all, and love of pleasure?--one the most debasing, the other the most ignoble of the mind’s diseases.