"Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbours, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognised; and where a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as a reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private intercourse we are not suspicious of each other, nor angry with our neighbour if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private intercourse, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for authority and for the laws, having an especial regard for those which are ordained for the protection of the injured, as well as for those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment."
Now what Pericles here wished to impress on the Athenians, as the ideal at which their social life should be aimed, may be expressed mainly in two propositions. First, the whole Athenian people were identified with, actually were, the State, in a higher and fuller sense than had so far been realised by any Greek city; all shared equally in its government, in its education, and in its pleasures. Secondly, this equality of right and advantage, so far from reducing all to a dead level of intellect, actually gave freer play to individual talent than
it is only from the Greek, and from the laying to heart of every phrase of it, that Pericles' meaning can fully be apprehended.
