We moderns, on the other hand, on account of our preconceived notions with respect to the advancement of civilization, do not read without partiality the lessons which history affords us; we refuse to recognise the most profound political wisdom in an age which we believe to have been occupied in rude attempts after the formation of a settled form of government. Far otherwise the political speculators of antiquity, such as the Pythagoreans and Plato, who considered the Spartan and Cretan form of government, _i.e._, the ancient Dorian, as a general model of all governments; and, in fact, the ideal constitution which was realized in Sparta approaches most nearly to that which Pythagoras attempted to establish in Lower Italy, and which Plato brought forward as capable of being put in practice, viz., a close communion, nearly similar to that of a family, having for its object mutual instruction. For the regulations of Pythagoras have many things besides their aristocratic spirit in common with the Spartan form of government, such as the public tables, and in general the perpetual living in public, with the number of laws for the maintenance of public morality (_disciplina morum_); and the community of goods, which existed among the Pythagoreans, is nearly allied to the Doric system of equalizing the landed estates. And Plato, although he at times criticises the Spartan and Cretan constitution in a somewhat unfair manner, has evidently derived his political notions, mediately or immediately, from the consideration of that form of government:(866) for it is hardly possible that any person should speculate upon government, without proceeding upon some chosen historical basis, however he may endeavour to conceal it. But the Athenian and Ionic democracy he altogether despises, because that appeared on his principles to be an annihilation of government rather than a government, in which every person, striving to act as much as possible for himself, destroyed that unison and harmony in which each individual exists only as a part of the whole.