It is, for example, of great importance to note that the Greek State was essentially a city with its suburbs, where the children lived so near each other that day-schools could be attended by all. In a larger State, which implies a population scattered through the country, much more must be intrusted to parents, since day-schools are necessarily inadequate[124:1]. This is but one of the differences to be weighed in making the comparison. To state them all would lead us beyond reasonable limits. [Sidenote: Can a real democracy ever be sufficiently educated?] Still, I take the verdict of the philosophers as well worth considering,--and, indeed, there is no question which now agitates the minds of enlightened democrats more deeply than this: How can we expect uneducated masses of people to direct the course of public affairs with safety and with wisdom? It is certain that even in the small, easily manageable, and highly cultivated republics of the Greeks, men were not educated enough to regard the public weal as paramount, to set it above their narrow interests or to bridle their passions. Is it likely, then, that Education will ever do this for the State? Are we following an _ignis fatuus_ in setting it up as the panacea for the defects of our communities? [Sidenote: Christianity gives us a new force.] § 52. To these grave doubts there is an obvious but not, I think, a real rejoinder, when we urge that the position of the Christian religion in modern education makes the latter a moral force for good far superior to any devices of legislators. [Sidenote: Formal religion always demanded by the Greeks.] While admitting unreservedly the vast progress we have attained by having the Christian religion an integral part of all reasonable education, we must urge on the other side that to most people, and at all times, religion is only a very occasional guide of action, and that what we have attained with all our preaching and teaching is rather an acquiescence in its excellence than a practical submission to its directions. So far as this mere acquiescence in moral sanctions is to be considered, all Greek legislators took care to inculcate the teaching and the observance of a State religion, with moral sanctions, and with rewards and punishments. They knew as well as we do that a public without a creed is a public without a conscience, and that scepticism, however consistent with individual sobriety and goodness, has never yet been found to serve as a general substitute for positive beliefs. [Sidenote: Real religion the property of exceptional persons.]