But although the real rulers of men in Greece saw all this clearly, it was not so with the theorists, nor indeed were they bound to observe practical limitations in framing the highest ideal to which man could attain. Hence we see in almost all the theorists a strong tendency to make Spartan institutions the proper type of a perfect State. Plato will not even consider the duties of an imperial or dominating State, he rather regards large territory and vast population as an insuperable obstacle to good government. But as a philosopher deeply interested in the real culture of the mind, perhaps as a theorist deeply impressed with the haphazard character of the traditional education, he felt that to intrust an uneducated mob with the control of public affairs was either to hand over the State to unscrupulous leaders, who would gain the favour of the crowd by false and unworthy means, or to run the chance of having the most important matters settled by the caprice of a many-headed and therefore wholly irresponsible tyrant. [Sidenote: Plato's successors.] [Sidenote: Their general agreement,] Every theorist that followed Plato seems to have felt the same difficulties, and therefore he and they adopted in the main the Spartan solution,--first, in limiting the number and condition of those to whom they would intrust power; secondly, in interfering from the beginning, more or less, in the education and training of the individual citizen. They differed as to the amount of control to be exercised,--Plato and the Stoic Zeno were the most trenchant, and thought least of the value of individual character;--they differed as to the particular form of the actual government; whether a small council of philosophic elders, or some limited assembly of responsible and experienced citizens, or, still better, one ideal man, the natural king among men, should direct the whole course of the State. [Sidenote: (1) especially on suffrage,] But on the other two points they were firm. First, universal suffrage had been in their opinion proved a downright failure. And let the reader remember that this universal suffrage only meant the voting of free citizens,--slaves never came within their political horizon,--still more, that the free citizens of many Greek democracies, notably of the Athenian, were more highly educated than any Parliament in our own day[121:1].