Whether he was in heart a republican after the Attic type, like Aristotle, or, like his illustrious disciples Plato and Xenophon, cherished a reactionary partiality for the Spartan or monarchico-aristocratic form of government, is difficult to say. Certainly in the _Memorabilia_ there is nothing that savours of an admiration of absolutism, or a blind reverence for Sparta; and though there was in his time a current notion--arising out of recent political misfortunes--that the Athenian character had degenerated, we find him, in a remarkable conversation with young Pericles, rather disposed to vindicate than to exaggerate the faults of his democratic fellow-citizens. At the same time, it is quite certain that as a philosopher, and a man free to look at {101} public affairs from an impartial position, he did not approve of certain principles fondly cherished in the practice of the democracy of which he was a member. If therefore in his heart he wished a democracy at all, he must have wished it, as Aristotle also did, under those checks, and with that tempering admixture of the aristocratic element which would constitute it what Aristotle calls a πολιτεία, and what we should call a moderate republic, or a popular government not founded on mere liberty and equality, and not subject to the overbearing sway of a mere numerical majority. For in the existing democracy of Athens we find him attributing the military mishaps of his countrymen to the circumstance that their officers had no professional training, and the generals of the army were in fact for the most part extemporized.[101.1] This was no doubt a very vulnerable point of the democracy; for we find Philip of Macedon in the next century telling the Athenians sarcastically that they were surely a very wonderful people, inasmuch as they found ten generals to elect every year, whereas he in his whole life had been able to find only one, Parmenio. And in the same spirit the pungent father of the Cynics had told them, after a general election, that they had better go and vote publicly that asses were horses, which would certainly be more reasonable than to vote that certain persons whom they had just stamped with the title of generals were soldiers. As little could Socrates, as a thinking man, and a man of lofty self-reliance, with a more than common amount {102} of moral courage, approve either of the democratic device of choosing important public officers by the blind chance of the ballot, or of that unreasoned usage of all democracies, that a mixed multitude, huddled into the vote, under the influence of sudden passion or subtle intrigue, shall, by a mere numerical majority, decide on the most critical questions, which require comprehensive survey, cool decision, and impartial judgment. Again, as a man of truth, he had a special objection to the method of governing in democracies by pandering to the prejudices of the people rather than by opposing them; and above