Timaeus — Plato

26o

The individual and the State again.

Republic VIII. Socrates, Adeimantus. in their toiling and saving ways, in their want of cultivation.

The oligarchical man keeps up a fair outside, but he has only an enforced virtue and will cheat when he can.

Certainly. Also in their penurious, laborious character ; the individual only satisfies his necessary appetites, and confines his expenditure to them ; his other desires he subdues, under the idea that they are unprofitable. True. He is a shabby fellow, who saves something out of everything and makes a purse for himself ; and this is the sort of man whom the vulgar applaud. Is he not a true image of the State which he represents? He appears to me to be so ; at any rate money is highly valued by him as well as by the State. You see that he is not a man of cultivation, I said. I imagine not, he said ; had he been educated he would never have made a blind god director of his chorus, or given him chief honour i. Excellent! I said. Yet consider: Must we not further admit that owing to this want of cultivation there will be found in him dronelike desires as of pauper and rogue, which are forcibly kept down by his general habit of life? True. Do you know where you will have to look if you want to discover his rogueries? Where must I look? You should see him where he has some great opportunity of acting dishonestly, as in the guardianship of an orphan. Aye. It will be clear enough then that in his ordinary dealings which give him a reputation for honesty he coerces his bad passions by an enforced virtue ; not making them see that they are wrong, or taming them by reason, but by necessity and fear constraining them, and because he trembles for his possessions. To be sure. Yes, indeed, my dear friend, but you will find that the natural desires of the drone commonly exist in him all the same whenever he has to spend what is not his own.

' Reading /cat ETiim fiakiGra. Ev, tjv d' hyu, according to Schneider's excellent emendation.

///. From oligarchy to democracy. 261 Yes, and they will be strong in him too. Republic The man, then, will be at war with himself ; he will be two ^^^' men, and not one ; but, in general, his better desires will be ^ocrates, ' . . Adeimantus. found to prevail over his inferior ones. True.

For these reasons such an one will be more respectable than most people ; yet the true virtue of a unanimous and harmonious soul will flee far away and never come near him. I should expect so.

555 And surely, the miser individually will be an ignoble com- His meanness petitor in a State for any prize of victory, or other object of '"* contest. ^ ^ *■ ■' ^ -^ he saves his honourable ambition ; he will not spend his money in the money and contest for glory; so afraid is he of awakening his expensive '^ses the pnze. appetites and inviting them to help and join in the struggle ; in true oligarchical fashion he fights with a small part only of his resources, and the result commonly is that he loses the prize and saves his money.

Very true. Can we any longer doubt, then, that the miser and moneymaker answers to the oligarchical State? There can be no doubt.

Next comes democracy ; of this the origin and nature have Democracy still to be considered by us ; and then we will enquire into the Y'^^^ °"* ^^ _ -^ _ . ^ the extravaways of the democratic man, and bring him up for judgment, ganceand That, he said, is our method. indebtedness ot men of Well, I said, and how does the change from oligarchy family and into democracy arise?

Is it not on this wise? — The good at p°^'''°"' which such a State aims is to become as rich as possible, a desire which is insatiable? What then? The rulers, being aware that their power rests upon their wealth, refuse to curtail by law the extravagance of the spendthrift youth because they gain by their ruin ; they take interest from them and buy up their estates and thus increase their own wealth and importance? To be sure.

There can be no doubt that the love of wealth and the spirit of moderation cannot exist together in citizens of the same state to any considerable extent ; one or the other will be disregarded.