Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/319

The character of the Athenians, as presented to us by history, necessarily supposes their artists, poets and heroes, such as they were represented to be, and these, in their turn, would never have attained such excellence without the example of a still more transcendent greatness. The great captains of Greece modeled their actions upon the eminent qualities of Achilles, who was to them a type of true glory. Their illustrious artists and poets found their inspirations in the Iliad and Odyssey, those universal types of artistic and literary excellence. They both owe their existence to Homer, who was the magnificent personification of the arts, literature, and heroism of Greece.

This law, in virtue of which all that exists in the multitude 1s found in a more perfect manner in an aristocracy, and 1n a supereminent degree In a person; this law 1s so universal that it may be reasonably regarded as a law of history, and it is, In its turn, subjected to certain conditions which, like the law itself, are immutable and necessary. Thus, for example, it is an unalterable necessity for all these heroic personifications, that they should belong at the same time to the especial association which they personify, and to another association of a higher and larger scope. Achilles, Alexander, Cesar, Napoleon, as well as Homer, Virgil, and Dante, are at the same time citizens of two different cities—the one local and the other general, the one inferior and the other superior. In the superior city they live confounded in a sort of equality, while in the inferior city they each exercise an absolute sway; in the superior city they are citizens, in the inferior city they are emperors. This superior city, in which they are all equal, is