conclusion	373
had begun under, and partly even through, the rule of Penkles.
Though the Athenians were still capable of great military
exploits, shrewd political designs and high artistic achieve-
ments, both during the Peloponnesian War and in the suc-
ceeding decades, the social structure was changing at the same
time, and we are entitled to ask whether the people of Demo-
sthenes, or even that of Aristophanes, was the true representa-
tive of the Polls of Athens, in the same sense as the people of
Penkles had  been.   The people,  previously discordant on
issues of constitutional and foreign policies, but united as the
social body of citizens, gradually disintegrated into a class-
conscious society.   When the masses were no longer led by
aristocrats but by men of their own stamp, the standards of
'the people', that is to say of its majority of -petits bourgeois.,
became  predominant and general.   A people,  however,  of
'small officials and cunning beggars^7,^1 a people distinguished
by economic egotism, narrowness of outlook and good-natured
love of pleasure, will never create true and eternal things,
either in the political or the spiritual field    It will make no
decisive difference if this people is excited by its leaders to
fanatical devotion or outrage. The peasants and artisans, mer-
chants and workmen represent an often pleasant and lovable
part of the people, but they were and are unable to maintain
and carry on the traditions of a great past   This can only be
done by the famous 'creative minority', an aristocracy of intel-
lect and morals, an upper class, not mere individuals, of a
higher level of intellectual and moral education.   It is the un-
dying merit of democracy to have found the means for the
necessary aristocracy to receive continually new blood from the
whole people, and at the same time to have controlled this
aristocracy by public opinion    But no democracy, and no
State whatsoever, is fit to live if the ruling class is formed by
the petit bourgeois .> still less if these men are guided by misleading
and demagogic propaganda   This also was not more true two
thousand years ago than it is today ^2
^1	F 1084
^2	I have left the last sentences as they stood in the first edition, although they
have been open to misunderstanding   Therefore I better add that when in 1942
I wrote of the petits bourgeon misguided \y\ propaganda I was naturally thinking
of the Nazis and their followers.