Timaeus — Plato
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cxx Analysis 554-557. Kc-pubiic man is mean, saving, toiling, the slave of one passion which is cc VI 11 the master of the rest : Is he not the very image of the State ? He has had no education, or he would never have allowed the blind god of riches to lead the dance within him. And being uneducated he will have many slavish desires, some beggarly, some knavish, breeding in his soul.
If he is the trustee of an orphan, and has the power to defraud, he will soon prove that he is not without the will, and that his passions are only restrained by fear and not by reason. Hence he leads a divided existence ; in which the better desires mostly prevail.
But when he is con- 55, tending for prizes and other distinctions, he is afraid to incur a loss which is to be repaid only by barren honour ; in time of war he fights with a small part of his resources, and usually keeps his money and loses the victory. Next comes democracy and the democratic man, out of oligarchy and the oligarchical man.
Insatiable avarice is the ruling passion of an oligarchy ; and they encourage expensive habits in order that they may gain by the ruin of extravagant youth. Thus men of family often lose their property or rights of citizenship ; but they remain in the city, full of hatred against the new owners of their estates and ripe for revolution.
The usurer with stooping walk pretends not to see them ; he passes by, and leaves his sting — that is, his money — in some other victim; and many a man has to pay the parent or principal sum multiplied into a family of children, and is reduced into a state of dronage by him. 55' The only way of diminishing the evil is either to limit a man in his use of his property, or to insist that he shall lend at his own risk.
But the ruling class do not want remedies; they care only for money, and are as careless of virtue as the poorest of the citizens. Now there are occasions on which the governors and the governed meet together, — at festivals, on a journey, voyaging or fighting.
The sturdy pauper finds that in the hour of danger he is not despised ; he sees the rich man puffing and panting, and draws the conclusion which he privately imparts to his companions,— 'that our people are not good for much;' and as a sickly frame is made ill by a mere touch from without, or sometimes without external impulse is ready to fall to pieces of itself, so from the least cause, or with none at all, the city falls ill and fights a battle for life or death. And democracy comes into 55;
V The manner of life in such a State is that of democrats ; there " is freedom and plainness of speech, and every man does what is right in his own eyes, and has his own way of Yiie. Hence arise the most various developments of character; the State is hke a piece of embroidery of which the colours and figures are the manners of men, and there are many who, like women and children, prefer this variety to real beauty and excellence.
The State is not one but many, like a bazaar at which you can buy anything. The great charm is, that you may do as you like; you may govern if you like, let it alone if you like ; go to war r rg and make peace if you feel disposed, and all quite irrespective of anybody else.
When you condemn men to death they remain alive all the same ; a gentleman is desired to go into exile, and he stalks about the streets like a hero ; and nobody sees him or cares for him. Observe, too, how grandly Democracy sets her foot upon all our fine theories of education, — how little she cares for the training of her statesmen ! The only qualification which she demands is the profession of patriotism.
Such is democracy ; — a pleasing, lawless, various sort of government, distributing equality to equals and unequals alike. Let us now inspect the individual democrat; and first, as in the case of the State, we will trace his antecedents. He is the son of a miserly oligarch, and has been taught by him to restrain the love of unnecessary pleasures.
Perhaps I ought to explain 559 this latter term: — Necessary pleasures arc those which are good, and which we cannot do without ; unnecessary pleasures are those which do no good, and of which the desire might be eradicated by early training. For example, the pleasures of eating and drinking are necessary and healthy, up to a certain point ; beyond that point they are alike hurtful to body and mind, and the excess may be avoided.
When in excess, they may be rightly called expensive pleasures, in opposition to the useful ones. And the drone, as we called him, is the slave of these unnecessary pleasures and desires, whereas the miserly oligarch is subject only to the necessary. The oligarch changes into the democrat in the following manner: — The youth who has had a miserly bringing up, gets a taste of the drone's honey ; he meets with wild companions, who introduce him to every new pleasure. As in the State, so in the individual, there are allies on both sides, temptations from without and passions from within; there is reason also nnd external influences of parents and friends in alliance with the oligarchical principle; and the two factions are in violent conflict 5^*^ with one another.
Sometimes the party of order prevails, but then again new desires and new disorders arise, and the whole mob of passions gets possession of the Acropolis, that is to say, the soul, which they find void and unguarded by true words and works. Falsehoods and illusions ascend to take their place ; the prodigal goes back into the country of the Lotophagi or drones, and, openly dwells there.
And if any offer of alliance or parley of individual elders comes from home, the false spirits shut the gates of the castle and permit no one to enter, — there is a battle, and they gain the victory ; and straightway making alliance with the desires, they banish modesty, which they call folly, and send temperance over the border.
When the house has been swept and garnished, they dress up the exiled vices, and, crowning them with garlands, bring them back under new names. Insolence they call good breeding, anarchy freedom, waste magnificence, impudence courage. Such is the process by which the [-5 youth passes from the necessary pleasures to the unnecessary.
After a while he divides his time impartially between them ; and perhaps, when he gets older and the violence of passion has abated, he restores some of the exiles and lives in a sort of equilibrium, indulging first one pleasure and then another; and if reason comes and tells him that some pleasures are good and honourable, and others bad and vile, he shakes his head and says that he can make no distinction between them.
Thus he lives in the fancy of the hour ; sometimes he takes to drink, and then he turns abstainer; he practises in the gymnasium or he does nothing at all; then again he would be a philosopher or a politician ; or again, he would be a warrior or a man of business ; he is 'Every thing by starts and nothing long. There remains still the finest and fairest of all men and all 56: States — tyranny and the tyrant. Tyranny springs from democracy much as democracy springs from oligarchy. Both arise
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