What they see is their own personal, class, dynastic, or
municipal version of affairs that in reality extend far beyond the
boundaries of their vision. They see their aspect. They see it as
right. But they cross other people who are similarly self-centered.
Then their very existence is endangered, or at least what they, for
unsuspected private reasons, regard as their existence and take to be
a danger. The end, which is impregnably based on a real though private
experience justifies the means. They will sacrifice any one of these
ideals to save all of them,... "one judges by the result..."
3
These elemental truths confronted the democratic philosophers.
Consciously or otherwise, they knew that the range of political
knowledge was limited, that the area of self-government would have to
be limited, and that self-contained states when they rubbed against
each other were in the posture of gladiators. But they knew just as
certainly, that there was in men a will to decide their own fate, and
to find a peace that was not imposed by force. How could they
reconcile the wish and the fact?
They looked about them. In the city states of Greece and Italy they
found a chronicle of corruption, intrigue and war. [Footnote:
"Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention...
and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been
violent in their deaths.
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