DEMOCRATS

special interests; real interests are concealed under party watchwords, and sacrificed to them. Popular passions are liable to upset the plans of experienced policy, and the demagogue too often ousts the true statesman from his well-merited position in the esteem of the people. It may be added that in the administration of foreign affairs, the changefulness and publicity usually characteristic of the democracy place it at a disadvantage as compared with the secrecy, continuity, and tenacity of a government like that of Russia.

Much has been written on the merits and demerits, the advantages and disadvantages of the democracy. It really perhaps concerns us more to observe the fact that it is the inevitable outcome of the prevalent historic forces, that it has a great function in modern history, and that it is the duty of the citizen and statesman to do their duty under it, and to adapt it to the material, intellectual, and moral improvement of men.

See the articles GOVERNMENT, REPRESENTATION; De Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1862); Motley, Historic Progress of American Democracy (1869); Freeman, Comparative Politics (1873); Sir T. E. May, Democracy in Europe (1878); Sir H. S. Maine, Popular Government (1885); Bryce, The American Commonwealth (1888).

Democrats, a political party in the United States. So early as Washington's first administration, a party known variously as Republicans or Democrats had already been formed, who desired to limit the federal power, and to increase that of the states and of the people; about 1808 the title of Republicans as synonymous with Democrats disappeared. See REPUBLICANS. Electing Jefferson president in 1801, the Democrats remained in power till 1841, and the administration was in their hands also in 1845-49, in 1853-61, and in 1885-89. Democratic presidents have been Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Polk, Pierce, Buchanan, Cleveland. For the positions taken by Democrats on the most prominent issues, see the article UNITED STATES. During President Cleveland's term of office the party committed itself to the principle of a reform of the tariff. Democritus, an illustrious Greek philosopher, was born at Abdera, in Thrace, about 470 or 460 B.C. Of his life little is known. The statement

that he was first inspired with a desire for philosophic knowledge by certain Magi and Chaldeans whom Xerxes had left at Abdera, on his Grecian expedition, is as untrustworthy as that which represents him as continually laughing at the follies of mankind. His extensive travels, however, through a great portion of the East, prove the reality of this desire, as does also his ceaseless industry in collecting the works of other philosophers. Democritus was by far the most learned thinker of his age. He had also a high reputation for moral worth. He appears to have left a strong impression of his disinterestedness, modesty, and simplicity on the mind of the community, for even Timon the scoffer, who spared no one else, praised him. The period of his death is uncertain. He lived, however, to a great age. Only a few fragments of his numerous physical, mathematical, ethical, and musical works are extant. These have been collected by Mullach (Berlin, 1843). Cicero praises his style, and Pyrrhon imitated it.

Democritus's system of philosophy is known as the atomic system, which is considered to have been founded by Leucippus. Its essence consists in the attempt to explain the different phenomena of nature-not like the earlier Ionic philosophers, by maintaining that the original characteristics of matter were qualitative, but that they were quantitative. He assumes, therefore, as the ultimate elementary ground of nature, an infinite

multitude of indivisible corporeal particles, atoms (see ATOM), and attributes to these a primary motion derived from no higher principle. This motion brings the atoms into contact with each other, and from the multitudinous combinations that they form, springs that vast and varying aggregate called nature, which is presented to our eyes. Democritus did not acknowledge the presence of design in nature, but he admitted that of law. The word chance,' he says, 'is only an expression of human ignorance.' He believed strictly in secondary or physical causes, but not in a primary immaterial cause. Life, consciousness, thought, were, according to him, derived from the finest atoms; those images of the sensuous phenomena surrounding us, which we call mental representations, were, according to him, only material impressions, caused by the more delicate atoms streaming through the pores of our organs. Democritus boldly applied his theory to the gods themselves, whom he affirmed to be aggregates of atoms, only mightier and more powerful than men. His ethical system, spite of the grossness of his metaphysics, is both pure and noble. Such fragments of his writings as we possess contain beautiful, vigorous, and true thoughts concerning veracity, justice, law, order, and the duties of rulers; while, in a spirit not alien to the teaching of Christianity, he looks upon an inward peace of heart and conscience as the highest good, the end and the aim of all virtuous endeavour. Demodex. See ACARUS.

Demogeot, JACQUES CLAUDE, a French littérateur, born 5th July 1808 at Paris, lectured at Beauvais, Rennes, Bordeaux, and Lyons, and was appointed in 1843 to the chair of Rhetoric at the Most of his books treat Lycée St-Louis at Paris.

of the history of literature; the chief are Les Lettres et les Hommes de Lettres au XIX. Siècle (1856); Histoire de la Littérature française (1857), an admirable hand-book; Tableau de la Littérature française au XVII. Siècle (1859); and Histoire des Littératures étrangères (2 vols. 1880). His poems are little known.

the crane family (Gruida), differing from the true Demoiselle (Anthropoides), a genus of birds in cranes in having the head and neck quite feathered, and the beak no longer than the head. Demoiselle (A. virgo) is about 3 feet in length

Demoiselle (Anthropoides virgo).

The

from the point of the bill to the tip of the tail, and the top of its head is about 3 feet from the ground. It is remarkable, like its relatives, for elegance and symmetry of form, and grace of deportment. The feathers covering the upper part of the wing are much elongated, as in the cranes. The general

colour of its plumage is gray, but the sides of the head are adorned with two elegant white tufts, and the breast bears long blackish feathers. The demoiselle is an African and Asiatic bird, but visits Greece and other parts of the south of Europe. To the same genus belongs the beautiful Stanley Crane (A. paradisaeus), a larger and taller bird found in the East Indies.

Demoivre, ABRAHAM, a distinguished mathematician, was born at Vitry, in Champagne, 26th May 1667. A Protestant, he fled to England in 1685, on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and there long supported himself by private tuition and public lecturing. The appearance of Newton's Principia incited him to increased devotion to mathematical studies, and at last he ranked among the leading mathematicians of his time. He was

a member of the Royal Society of London, and of the Academies of Berlin and Paris. The Philo

sophical Transactions of London are enriched by many contributions from his pen; and he was so esteemed by the Royal Society that they judged him a fit person to assist in the decision of the famous contest between Newton and Leibnitz for the merit of the invention of fluxions. He died in

London, 27th November 1754. Among his published works are Annuities upon Lives (1725), Miscellanea Analytica de Seriebus et Quadraturis (1730); and The Doctrine of Chances (1718 and 1738), dedicated to Sir Isaac Newton. Demoivre's name is well known from its association with a useful trigonometrical formula-viz. that, where k is any real quantity, cos ke + sin ke is always one value of (cos + sin 0)".

Demonetisation. See BIMETALLISM. Demonology, the doctrine that relates to demons, a body of spiritual beings inferior in rank to deities proper, but yet capable of influencing human affairs. The earlier and more widelyspread conception of the demon was merely that of a more or less powerful and intermediate agent between gods and men, at one time resolving himself into a kind of special guardian or patronspirit, at another acting as the minister of the divine displeasure. The gradual differentiation between the beneficent and the malignant qualities of demons resulted in the division into good spirits or guardian-angels and evil spirits or devils; and Christian theology, developing earlier Jewish ideas -themselves powerfully modified by the influence of Persian dualism-worked up the one class into an elaborate hierarchy of angels and archangels, the other into a formidable host of fallen angels or devils, considered as continually employed in frustrating the good purposes of God, and marshalled under one master-spirit, the devil proper or Satan, the supreme impersonation of the spirit of evil. The guardian-angel corresponds closely to such conceptions as the Roman genius and even the famous daimon of Socrates. To primitive man the demon was but one of the thousand spiritual beings who controlled every one of the causes of nature, and whose favour must be purchased by constant tributes of respect and worship. It was perfectly consistent with primitive philosophy that the manes or ghosts of the dead should continue after death the influence they enjoyed in life, and thus should pass into the higher class of deities. The essential distinctions between the divine and the human that seem so fundamental to modern minds did not occur to those whose notions of the visible and invisible universe alike were entirely animistic; and thus we find that the savage makes no clear distinction between ghosts and demons, and that his conception of the demon is constructed on the model of the human soul, of course with any number of terrible and superhuman qualities

DEMONOLOGY

superinduced. It is not merely family affection, but actual fear and considerations of prudence, that lead to the worship of ancestors and of the dead; and the good or bad fortune of living men is attributed to the direct interference of the invisible spirits with which the whole air around is swarming. These spirits may not only affect the fortune of the individual, but may even enter into his body, and cause internal diseases and such other inexplicable phenomena as frenzy, wild ravings, hysterical epilepsy, and the like. The very etymology of such words as catalepsy and ecstasy points plainly to a time when there was no metaphor in their meaning. Such is the explanation of disease offered at the present day by savage man all over the world, and such was also the belief of the semi-civilised ancient Egyptians and Babylonians. Indeed, it disappeared but slowly before the progress of scientific medicine, and continued to reappear in survivals strangely perplexing on any other explanation. the function of the exorcist arises naturally as a means of effecting a cure by expelling the demon, and we find him daily exercising his skill in Africa, and even in China and India. A careful distinction is made by sorcerers as to whether the infesting demon possesses or obsesses his victim-i. e. controls him from the inside or the outside. In early Christian times those demoniacally possessed, or energumens, were grouped into a class under the care of a special order of clerical exorcists, and after the time of St Augustine the rite of exorcism came to be applied to all infants before baptism. Indeed, exorcists still form one of the 'minor orders' of the Catholic Church.

Hence

Reverting to the animistic theory of demonology, we find how well it harmonises with widely-spread notions in folklore of phantom-dreams-nightmare (A.S. mara, 'a crusher'); the Slavonic vampires, or witch-ghosts, who suck the blood of living victims; incubi and succubi, like Adam's wife Lilith in the rabbinical story (Assyrian lilit, a succubus'), demons who consort with women and men in their sleep and by whose means children may be engendered between demons and women; the Hindu rakshas, malignant and gigantic demoniacal ogres who can at will assume any shape; and witches, who have confessed a thousand times to being possessed with a familiar spirit, and who own allegiance in particular to the master-demon, Satan. Other embodiments of the spirit of evil are the Celtic and Teutonic Giants, and the Ogres of southern romance, who destroy men and devour their flesh; the Norse Trolls, one-eyed, malignant but stupid monsters; the Drakos and Lamias of modern Greece; the Lithuanian Laume; the Russian fiery and flying snakes, Koshchei the Deathless, Baba Yaga, a hideous old hag who flies through the air in a fiery mortar, propelled with a pestle, and the Morskoi Tsar, or king of the waters, with his daughters, the ubiquitous swanmaidens of romance. No mythology is richer than the Slavonic in malignant male and female demons and fiends (chorti, devils'), gloomy shadows of old nature myths and degraded forms of the great deities of an earlier religion, a combination of the most heterogeneous elements flung together in the most perplexing confusion. Traces remain of an original dualism between a great black and a white god (Byelun); but besides this and those fiendish forms already mentioned, Mr Ralston enumerates the karliki, or fiendish dwarfs; lyeshuie, silvan demons resembling the fauns and satyrs of Greek mythology; vodyanuie, or watersprites; vozdushnuie, demons who ride the whirlwinds; domovuie, or domestic spirits like the Scotch brownies and the Lithuanian kaukas; and the rusalka, a kind of Naiad or Undine.

Demons with specialised functions exist in mythology everywhere, as the Japanese Oni, who bring on winds, themselves living at the centre of the storm; the Chinese air-dragons, whose battles bring on waterspouts; the demons of floods in old Egyptian and Akkadian mythology; the spectres and phantoms that infest the sea; the nixies of northern Europe, and the kelpies of Scotland, who haunt pools to drown unwary travellers, and naturally hate bridges, although elsewhere many bridges as well as other superhuman works have been erected, usually in miraculously short periods of time, by demons, often at the command of powerful magicians like Michael Scott. Sometimes the devil even consents to build a church for the reward of the soul of the first that enters it. Others again are those sirens who, by their unearthly beauty or the charm of their singing, draw on unwary youths to their ruin; most famous of these, the romantic Lorelei of the Rhine. Again, particular animals, chiefly those with power to harm man, are favourite hosts for demons to inhabit, especially the serpent, but also the cat, the hedgehog, the hare, the fox, the he-goat, the raven, the wolf the old Norse Fenris, and the dog, especially if black in colour, like the dog in Faust. The madness of dogs, with its peculiar horror, itself opens up a strange chapter in the history of demonology.

One of the most systematic of demonologies is that elaborated by the Moslem theologians. The Jinn (sing. Jinnee) were created two thousand years before Adam, but sinned against God and were degraded from their original high estate. The greatest among them was Iblees (Eblis), who was cast out by Allah for refusing to worship Adam as made of earth, he himself having been formed of smokeless fire. The Sheytáns form his host; other species of subordinate fiends are the Jánn, the least powerful, also 'Efreets (Afrits) and Márids, the last the most powerful. Eminent among the evil Jinn are the five sons of Iblees-Teer, who brings about calamities, losses, and injuries; ElAawar, who encourages debauchery; Sót, who suggests lies; Dásim, who causes hatred between man and wife; and Zelemboor, who presides over places of traffic. Inferior demons are the Ghoul, often in human form and devouring the bodies of the dead like the Russian werewolves; the Sealáh, found in forests; the Delhán, living in islands; and the Shikk, shaped like a human being halved lengthwise. The Jinn assume various shapes, sometimes as men of enormous size and portentous hideousness. They live chiefly on the mountains of Káf, which encompass the whole earth, and their evil influence may be averted by talismans and invocations, and pre-eminently wise magicians like Solomon may command their services. They consist of forty troops, each troop containing six hundred thousand. See chapter ií. of Lane's Arabian Society in the Middle Ages (edited by Stanley Lane-Poole, 1883).

The subject of dualism, or the division of all the invisible powers into two great armies of good and evil demons, ranged under the supreme impersonations of good and evil, will be discussed under ZOROASTER, and here it is sufficient to say that it modified the whole later Jewish and Talmudic demonology, and reappeared in the Manichæan heresy. To it is due the distinction between the demon and the devil, a notion which seems fundamental to the modern moral sense, but was foreign to the earlier demonology, according to which all the specially malignant qualities and the love of evil for its own sake become characteristic of the latter. The Vritra and the other night-powers, the Panis, of the Vedic hymns, are as yet hardly more than personifications of merely physical evil, not inherently and absolutely wicked; while the

749

Loki of the ancient Scandinavians, their nearest approximation to a personification of evil, was rather a demigod than a devil, not essentially hostile to the other deities, although he works them mischief enough; and the four archdemons of the Rabbins, Samaël, Azazel, Asaël, and Maccathiel, seem to have been originally nothing more than personifications of the elements as energies of the deity. Even the name Lucifer ('the light-bearer'), the fallen angel of the morning star, fits ill with a conception of a devil utterly and hopelessly evil. The widely-spread belief that demons are lame accords well with a supposed fall from heaven and an original state of innocence. It is not a little striking at anyrate to find the same characteristic in Hephaistos, Wayland the Smith, and the Persian Ashma-the Asmodeus of the Book of Tobit, the Diable Boiteux' of Le Sage. The sootiness of his abode and his blackness of colour are persistent characteristics, although, indeed, some West African negroes have a white devil. The usual cloven feet of the devil in European folk-tales, often the last mark of identification, when even the horns and the tail are hidden, is a reminiscence of the Greek satyr and the forest-sprites of old Teutonic and other folklore. The ugliness of the medieval representations of the devil in religious art, as may be seen in the fantastic gargoyles of many churches, was but a part of the early church's policy of degradation to which the native deities were subjected, and from which sprung the medieval belief that the various gods of the old heathen world were the devils or degraded angels of Scripture. This notion is familiar to readers of Paradise Lost, although Milton makes an ingenious poetic use of it that is all his own. And even the medieval devil, with all his terror, had strange limitations to his power, especially perhaps in the folklore of the north. He is often ludicrously outwitted, and his machinations foiled by some obvious enough device or verbal quibble. It is not merely the weakest saint upon his knees that can baffle his infernal schemes, but some country-fellow who beats him at his own weapons, and whom afterwards he will have in hell at no price. The old Scotch notion of Satan as grown so much the more dangerous from the accumulated wickedness and wisdom of six thousand years is hopelessly inconsistent with the archfiend of Norse folklore.

The early Christian idea of hell, the abode of the demons, owed many of its features to the Jewish Gehenna, with its perpetual fire, the horror of its sacrifices, and its loathsome worm; and the characteristics of Moloch and other primitive firegods became associated with the devil, degraded from a fire-god to a mere powerful spirit. The Jinn of Arabian mythology, who are slaves of the lamp and ascend as clouds of smoke, serve also to show how fundamental was the notion of a firefiend which passed, though under degraded form, into Christian theology. Consistent with this is the widespread belief in Europe that the devil cannot touch or cross running water, of which poetic use is admirably made in the magnificent phantasy of Tam o' Shanter. Again, the struggle between Balder and the deadly powers of winter in the Norse mythology was spiritualised and amplified into Christ conquering Death and Hell and releasing the spirits from prison; and the old northern ideas of wintry cold personified into a powerful and malignant demon, under new influences passed to swell the attributes of the Christian devil, whose dreary abode provided those torments of frost as well as fire familiar to readers of Dante. Herein is the origin of the folklore notion that the home of the demons was the north, and hence the inveterate

English preference for burial on the south side of a church. No stories are more common than those of compacts with the devil, sometimes written in blood, by which a man gave away his soul for wisdom, wealth, power, or other gratifications to be enjoyed for a certain number of years. The classical story in this kind is that of Faust, which the genius of Goethe has made an imperishable part of the intellectual birthright of Europe.

Raising the devil or his inferior demons was a feat within the power of the medieval sorcerers and masters of the black art, and elaborate formulas for the purpose are gravely given in the books of magic. This unholy art was made punishable by death by James I., and his law remained upon the statutebook of England till the reign of George II. The worship of the devil was a usual feature of the witches sabbath, and the name is often applied still to the strange dances and other religious rites by which many tribes in India and elsewhere avert the anger of malignant deities. It must be understood that there is no conscious homage to the principle of evil as opposed to good, as the objects of worship are merely deities powerful for harm as well as for help, considered almost as entirely outside any moral considerations, like the demons of unmixed primitive religion everywhere.

See the articles ANGEL, ANIMISM, DEVIL, EVIL, EXORCISM, HELL, SERPENT-WORSHIP, WEREWOLF, WITCHCRAFT, ZOROASTER; also Horst, Daemonomagie (2 vols. 1817), and Zauberbibliothek (6 vols. 1821-26); Ukert, Ueber Dämonen, Heroen, und Genien (1850): Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte (3 vols. 1860); Tylor's Primitive Culture (2 vols. 1871); Roskoff's admirably learned Geschichte des Teufels (2 vols. 1869); and for its facts, Moncure D. Conway's Demonology and Devil-lore (2 vols. 1879); also some of the older books, as Bodin, De Magorum Demonomania (1581), and the like.

ous.

De Morgan, AUGUSTUS, son of Colonel De Morgan of the Indian army, was born in 1806, in Madura, Madras Presidency. Educated at several private schools, he read algebra like a novel' (novels themselves he devoured insatiably); but after four years at Trinity College, Cambridge, he graduated as only fourth wrangler (1827). As a result of his revolt from his early evangelical training, he did not take orders. He was appointed first professor of Mathematics in University College, London, after its foundation in 1828. In 1831 he resigned this office, but was reappointed in 1836, and continued in that capacity till 1866. An energetic worker, he was secretary of the Astronomical Society (1831-38 and 1848-54), and held other offices therein. His writings are very numerBesides being a mathematician of the first order, he was extensively and minutely versed in the history of the mathematical and physical sciences. He also devoted himself to the develop ment of the Aristotelian or Formal' Logic, to which he has given so symbolical a shape as to make it seem like a branch of Algebra, and wrote on the calculation of Insurances and on the Decimal Coinage. His works include Elements of Arithmetic (1831); Algebra (1835); Numbers and Magnitude (1836); Trigonometry and Trigonometrical Analysis (1837); Essay on Probabilities (1838); Formal Logic (1847); Arithmetical Books (1847); Book of Almanacs (1850); Budget of Paradoxes (1872), reprinted from the Athenæum. De Morgan also wrote treatises on the Differential and Integral Calculus; and contributed largely to the Penny Cyclopædia (850 articles) and many scientific journals. He died 18th March 1871. His library of about 3000 volumes was purchased by Lord Overstone, and given to London University. See Memoir of Augustus de Morgan, by his wife (1882). Demosthenes, an able Athenian general, who in 425 B.C. assisted Cleon to reduce Sphacteria,

DEMOSTHENES

and who in 413, being sent to Sicily to the relief of Nicias, fell, fighting bravely, into the hands of the Syracusans, and was put to death.

Demosthenes, the greatest orator of Athens and of Greece, was born about 383 B.C. He lost his father at an early age. The considerable inheritance bequeathed to him was reduced by the neglect or the fraud of his guardians, and when he came of age he proceeded to prosecute them. The litigation was long and complicated, and though he gained verdicts in his favour, most of his inheritance was irretrievably lost. The importance of this litigation was that it compelled Demosthenes to the study of the law, gave the first exercise to that doggedness and strength of will which was to mark him through life, and by reducing him to poverty, drove him to the pursuit of law as a means of living. At Athens the parties to a suit were compelled to plead their cause themselves, but they could not be prevented from getting their speeches composed for them by a professional 'speech-writer' or 'logographer.' Demosthenes became a logographer, and soon acquired a lucrative practice. Up to the age of thirty Demosthenes confined himself to speechwriting, and gained considerable reputation as a constitutional lawyer. His most famous constitu tional law speech is one which he delivered perSonally in support of Ctesippus against Leptines (354 B.C.). He seems to have lacked by nature all the physical qualifications of a great orator, and to have acquired them solely by indefatigable self-discipline and training. At about the age of thirty he made his first appearance as a politician; he continued to practise as a logographer until he was about forty, by which time he had made a fortune sufficient to enable him to devote himself exclusively to political life until he died, at the age of about sixty-one.

6

At the beginning of his political career danger threatened Greece from the north, from Macedonia, a country which though at that time considered by the Greeks as semi-barbarous, and of no the lifetime of Demosthenes to destroy the account in Greek politics, was destined within Demosthenes' claim to fame as a statesman rests liberties and the political existence of Greece. on the fact that he foresaw the danger threatened by Philip of Macedon from the beginning, and which might have saved Athens and Greece. The that he from the outset advocated a policy three cardinal features of his policy were that the rich should submit to direct taxation for the purposes of the war; that the poor should submit, for the same purposes, to a diminution of the public expenditure on national festivals; and that rich and poor alike should render personal military service instead of employing mercenaries. Intelligent as was the Athenian democracy, it was not intelligent enough to see that Demosthenes' forecast was right, and his opponents' wrong; and, consequently, it was only when events justified Demosthenes, that is to say, when it was too late, that his policy was adopted. Philip's attack on the state of Olynthus gave occasion to the Olynthiacs, which, with the greatest speeches made by Demosthenes. Athens orations against Philip, the Philippics, are the made war with Philip on behalf of Olynthus, but having failed to save the city, found peace expedithenes was engaged in forming an anti-Macedonian ent. During the next few years (346-340) Demosparty, and in indicting Eschines for betraying cluded with Philip. War again broke out in 340, Athens in the negotiations for the peace just conending in the fatal battle of Charonea (338). But Athens, having learned to trust Demosthenes, did not withdraw her confidence. The philo-Macedonian party, however, were encouraged to seize on a proposal to present Demosthenes with a public

DEMOSTHENES

crown as an occasion for his political destruction. The trial was at length held in 330, when in the famous speech On the Crown Demosthenes gloriously vindicated himself against Æschines. In 324 Harpalus, the treasurer of Alexander the Great (who had succeeded Philip), absconded to Athens with an enormous sum of money. This money was placed in the state treasury, under the care of Demosthenes and others, and when Alexander | demanded it, half was missing. Demosthenes was accused, condemned, and escaped from prison into exile. The evidence does not seem to have warranted the verdict, which was probably given on political grounds, Demosthenes having offended both the. Macedonian party and the extreme patriots. In 323 Alexander died, and Demosthenes was recalled from exile to head a fruitless attempt to throw off the Macedonian yoke. The battle of Crannon ended the revolt. Demosthenes fled to Calaureia, and being there captured by Macedonian troops, poisoned himself, 322 B.C.

Demosthenes began life with a nervous, timid nature, and, unfortunately, as a boy was allowed by his mother to shirk the physical exercises and gymnastic training which formed part of the ordinary education of the young Athenian.

He grew

up with a tendency to effeminacy, which showed itself in an affection for luxurious clothing, and still more in his conduct as a citizen soldier; for although at Charonea he may have displayed no more cowardice than did the other Athenians who ran away, he was far from exhibiting the heroic bearing which distinguished Socrates at Delium. His timidity made him unsocial, and his waterdrinking habits cut him off still more effectually from society. His luxury may have reached the point of extravagance: he was certainly lavishly generous in the discharge of all claims on him, public and private. Whether his effeminacy amounted to immorality, as was charged against him, is a question which cannot be answered offhand in the negative. The natural defects which were to be seen in his private life may be traced in his public career; but here it is their conquest by force of will and determined adherence to a lofty purpose which has rightly given him his great name. His nervousness and timidity disqualified him for political life and public speaking; these defects he combated till he conquered them. His natural incapacity for amiability rendered him unsympathetic to the pleasure-loving Athenians; he compelled their respect by his intellectual power and the purity of his patriotism. The want of sympathy, however, he never overcame, and so he never obtained the hold over the Athenians which it would have been good for them that he should possess. In all democracies every politician who has led the masses at his own good-will has known on occasion how, if not to flatter, at least to say the thing that is pleasant; but Demosthenes' nature did not permit him to say pleasant things. Even this serious practical deficiency could not prevent his contemporaries from eventually recog nising his force of character and steadiness of noble purpose. Still less has it weighed with

posterity.

In the oratory of Demosthenes it is not difficult to trace the character of the man reflected. His resolute hard work and his infinite capacity for taking pains are seen in the high finish which distinguished his speeches above those of every orator. His moroseness is mirrored in the abuse of which he was too great a master; his want of amiability in the absence of humour. His nervousness betrays itself in his over-anxiety to argue, in his lack of ease and flow. But as in his life so in his speeches, all faults are blotted out by his unaffected earnestness, his entire devotion to his country, his intel

lectual loftiness, and his high political morality. These great qualities are the source of the dignity, the pathos, the might, majesty, and dominion of his political orations. Even these qualities, however, would not have raised him to the highest pinnacle in the fane of eloquence had he not possessed the ear and the mind of the artist in words, the former of which gave to his speeches the marvellous melody they possess, the latter the variety of vocabulary, which is one of Demosthenes' characteristics. Nor must it be forgotten that the way for Demosthenes had been paved by great predecessors. The summit on which he stands rests on the labours of Lysias, Isocrates, and others. Finally, oratory, to be great, must have great themes, and it is not in every age that they are forthcoming. Demosthenes had the lot, tragic but triumphant, of saving, though all else was lost, the honour of his country.

For the life of Demosthenes, A. Schäfer's Demosthenes und seine Zeit (2d ed. 1882) eclipses all other works, good as are the hand-books of Brodribb (1877) and Butcher (1881). The most exhaustive literary criticism is contained in Blass's Attische Beredsamkeit (1877). The best text is that of Bekker (1854). Kennedy's English translation (5 vols. 1852-63) is a monument of scholarship.

Demotica, a town of European Turkey, on a tributary of the Maritza, 31 miles S. of Adrianople by rail. It is the seat of a Greek bishop, and has manufactures of silks and pottery. Pop. 8000. Charles XII. of Sweden resided here from February 1713 to October 1714.

Demotic Alphabet. See HIEROGLYPHICS.

He

Dempster, THOMAS, a professor famous for his learning, and a miscellaneous and voluminous writer, was the son of Thomas, laird of Muiresk, Aberdeenshire, and was born about 1579. He was educated at Turriff, Aberdeen, Cambridge, Paris, Louvain, Rome, and Douay. A zealous Catholic, he was elected to several provincial professorships, and at Paris he was for seven years professor in the Collèges des Grassins, de Lisieux, and de Plessy. But a brawl resulted, it is said, in Dempster's having to retreat to England. soon returned to the Continent, bringing with him a beautiful wife, and at Pisa in 1616 obtained a professorship; but his wife's infidelities marring his peace, he removed to Bologna, where he became professor of Humanities, and where his wife completed her shame by eloping. Pursuing the fugitives, he was stricken with sickness, and died at Bologna, 6th September 1625. Dempster's not too veracious autobiography forms part of his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Scotorum (Bologna, 1627)-an erudite work in which, however, his desire to magnify the merits of his country often induced him to forge the names of persons and books that never existed, and to unscrupulously claim as Scotchmen writers whose birthplace was doubtful. It was edited by David Irving for the Bannatyne Club in 1829, and the manuscript is still preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. There is a selection from his Latin poetry in Johnstone's Delitiæ Poetarum Scotorum.

Demulcents (Lat. demulceo, 'I soften '), bland and lubricating liquid substances, taken by the mouth, for the purpose of soothing irritation of the mucous membranes, and promoting the dilution of the blood, and the increase of the secretions. Demulcents are chiefly composed of Starch (q.v.), or Gum (q.v.), or of substances containing these, dissolved in water; sometimes also of oily matters, or the white of eggs, and other albuminous or gelatinous substances largely diluted. The decoction of althæa, or marsh-mallow, is a favourite form of demulcent.