conscience dictates which exists in us all—that tendency to selfishness, that proneness to evil, which bears the same relation to particular and successive faults as the stem does to the branches and the leaves and the fruits of a tree. Hence his political system is even below the average. It is only when the natural selfishness of the human heart has been fully realised that a guarantee is sought against the ever-possible encroachments of an autocracy in the various methods of control extant, such as in collective representation, in publicity, in the personal responsibility of the ruling authorities—in a word, in all the free institutions of a free state. Apollonius believed in the possibility of a well-meaning and benevolent despotism, and could not imagine a better form of government. If the despot be a bad man, he must be removed by violent means; and accordingly Apollonius is not unwilling to meddle in two conspiracies. The Roman empire had lasted a long time, and a religious thinker might have known that human nature was too weak to turn the good and virtuous characters of sovereigns into a permanent
