animosities; the second is always even, always at the same high level,
which is that which the noblest endeavour of human reason can attain.
He has no passion but a passion for the public weal, for justice,
glory and intelligence. It is as though all his work were spread out
in the blue sky; and even his famous picture of the plague of Athens
seems covered with sunshine.


2

But there is no need to follow up this parallel, which is not my
object. I will not dwell any longer--though perhaps I may return to
them one day--upon the lessons which we might derive from that
Peloponnesian War, in which the position of Athens towards Lacedaemon
provides more than one point of comparison with that of France towards
Germany. True, we do not there see, as in our own case, civilized
nations fighting a morally barbarian people: it was a contest between
Greeks and Greeks, displaying however in the same 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