Grecian states, including Athens, held this principle of interference against the dissenting teacher. In any other government of Greece, as well as in the Platonic republic, Socrates would have been quickly arrested in his career, even if not severely punished; in Athens, he was allowed to talk and teach publicly for twenty-five or thirty years, and then condemned when an old man. Of these two applications of the same mischievous principle, assuredly the latter is at once the more moderate and the less noxious. Secondly, the force of this last consideration, as an extenuating circumstance in regard to the Athenians, is much increased, when we reflect upon the number of individual enemies whom Socrates made to himself in the prosecution of his cross-examining process. Here were a multitude of individuals, including men personally the most eminent and effective in the city, prompted by special antipathies, over and above general convictions, to call into action the dormant state-principle of intolerance against an obnoxious teacher. If, under such provocation, he was allowed to reach the age of seventy, and to talk publicly for so many years, before any real Meletus stood forward--this attests conspicuously the efficacy of the restraining dispositions among the people, which made their practical habits more liberal than their professed principles. Thirdly, whoever has read the account of the trial and defence of Socrates, will see that he himself contributed quite as much to the result as all the three accusers united. Not only he omitted to do all that might have been done without dishonour, to insure acquittal--but he held positive language very nearly such as Meletus himself would have sought to put in his mouth. He did this deliberately--having an exalted opinion both of himself and his own mission--and accounting the cup of hemlock, at his age, to be no calamity. It was only by such marked and offensive self-exaltation that he brought on the first vote of the dicastery, even then the narrowest majority, by which he was found guilty: it was only by a still more aggravated manifestation of the same kind, even to the pitch of something like insult, that he brought on the second vote, which pronounced the capital sentence. Now it would be uncandid not to allow for the effect of such a proceeding on the minds of the dicastery. They were not at all disposed, of their own accord, to put in force the recognised principle of intolerance against him. But when they found that the man who stood before them charged with this offence, addressed them in a tone such as dicasts had never heard before and could hardly hear with calmness, they could not but feel disposed to credit all the worst inferences which his accusers had suggested, and to regard Socrates as a dangerous man both religiously and politically, against whom it was requisite to uphold the majesty of the court and constitution.