... The respect with which the Persians were inspired
for royal authority was excessive."
The Greeks, although full of mind, were no less strangers to their own
responsibilities; so much so, that of themselves, like dogs and horses,
they would not have ventured upon the most simple games. In a classical
sense, it is an undisputed thing that everything comes to the people
from without.
"The Greeks, naturally full of spirit and courage, _had been early
cultivated_ by kings and colonies who had come from Egypt. From
them they had learned the exercises of the body, _foot races_, and
horse and chariot races.... The best thing that the Egyptians had
taught them was to become docile, and to allow themselves to be
formed by the laws for the public good."
_Fenelon_.--Reared in the study and admiration of antiquity, and a
witness of the power of Louis XIV., Fenelon naturally adopted the idea
that mankind should be passive, and that its misfortunes and its
prosperities, its virtues and its vices, are caused by the external
influence which is exercised upon it by the _law_, or by the makers of
the law. Thus, in his Utopia of Salentum, he brings the men, with their
interests, their faculties, their desires, and their possessions, under
the absolute direction of the legislator. Whatever the subject may be,
they themselves have no voice in it--the prince judges for them.
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