republic.txt

Do you remember that the children, too, were to be taken to see the
battle on horseback; and that if there were no danger they were to be
brought close up and, like young hounds, have a taste of blood given
them?

Yes, I remember.

The same practice may be followed, I said, in all these things—labours,
lessons, dangers—and he who is most at home in all of them ought to be
enrolled in a select number.

At what age?

At the age when the necessary gymnastics are over: the period whether
of two or three years which passes in this sort of training is useless
for any other purpose; for sleep and exercise are unpropitious to
learning; and the trial of who is first in gymnastic exercises is one
of the most important tests to which our youth are subjected.

Certainly, he replied.

After that time those who are selected from the class of twenty years
old will be promoted to higher honour, and the sciences which they
learned without any order in their early education will now be brought
together, and they will be able to see the natural relationship of them
to one another and to true being.

Yes, he said, that is the only kind of knowledge which takes lasting
root.

Yes, I said; and the capacity for such knowledge is the great criterion
of dialectical talent: the comprehensive mind is always the
dialectical.

I agree with you, he said.

These, I said, are the points which you must consider; and those who
have most of this comprehension, and who are most steadfast in their
learning, and in their military and other appointed duties, when they
have arrived at the age of thirty have to be chosen by you out of the
select class, and elevated to higher honour; and you will have to prove
them by the help of dialectic, in order to learn which of them is able
to give up the use of sight and the other senses, and in company with
truth to attain absolute being: And here, my friend, great caution is
required.

Why great caution?

Do you not remark, I said, how great is the evil which dialectic has
introduced?

What evil? he said.

The students of the art are filled with lawlessness.

Quite true, he said.

Do you think that there is anything so very unnatural or inexcusable in
their case? or will you make allowance for them?

In what way make allowance?

I want you, I said, by way of parallel, to imagine a supposititious son
who is brought up in great wealth; he is one of a great and numerous
family, and has many flatterers. When he grows up to manhood, he learns
that his alleged are not his real parents; but who the real are he is
unable to discover. Can you guess how he will be likely to behave
towards his flatterers and his supposed parents, first of all during
the period when he is ignorant of the false relation, and then again
when he knows? Or shall I guess for you?

If you please.

Then I should say, that while he is ignorant of the truth he will be
likely to honour his father and his mother and his supposed relations
more than the flatterers; he will be less inclined to neglect them when
in need, or to do or say anything against them; and he will be less
willing to disobey them in any important matter.

He will.

But when he has made the discovery, I should imagine that he would
diminish his honour and regard for them, and would become more devoted
to the flatterers; their influence over him would greatly increase; he
would now live after their ways, and openly associate with them, and,
unless he were of an unusually good disposition, he would trouble
himself no more about his supposed parents or other relations.

Well, all that is very probable. But how is the image applicable to the
disciples of philosophy?

In this way: you know that there are certain principles about justice
and honour, which were taught us in childhood, and under their parental
authority we have been brought up, obeying and honouring them.

That is true.

There are also opposite maxims and habits of pleasure which flatter and
attract the soul, but do not influence those of us who have any sense
of right, and they continue to obey and honour the maxims of their
fathers.

True.

Now, when a man is in this state, and the questioning spirit asks what
is fair or honourable, and he answers as the legislator has taught him,
and then arguments many and diverse refute his words, until he is
driven into believing that nothing is honourable any more than
dishonourable, or just and good any more than the reverse, and so of
all the notions which he most valued, do you think that he will still
honour and obey them as before?

Impossible.

And when he ceases to think them honourable and natural as heretofore,
and he fails to discover the true, can he be expected to pursue any
life other than that which flatters his desires?

He cannot.

And from being a keeper of the law he is converted into a breaker of
it?

Unquestionably.

Now all this is very natural in students of philosophy such as I have
described, and also, as I was just now saying, most excusable.

Yes, he said; and, I may add, pitiable.

Therefore, that your feelings may not be moved to pity about our
citizens who are now thirty years of age, every care must be taken in
introducing them to dialectic.

Certainly.

There is a danger lest they should taste the dear delight too early;
for youngsters, as you may have observed, when they first get the taste
in their mouths, argue for amusement, and are always contradicting and
refuting others in imitation of those who refute them; like puppy-dogs,
they rejoice in pulling and tearing at all who come near them.

Yes, he said, there is nothing which they like better.

And when they have made many conquests and received defeats at the
hands of many, they violently and speedily get into a way of not
believing anything which they believed before, and hence, not only
they, but philosophy and all that relates to it is apt to have a bad
name with the rest of the world.

Too true, he said.

But when a man begins to get older, he will no longer be guilty of such
insanity; he will imitate the dialectician who is seeking for truth,
and not the eristic, who is contradicting for the sake of amusement;
and the greater moderation of his character will increase instead of
diminishing the honour of the pursuit.

Very true, he said.

And did we not make special provision for this, when we said that the
disciples of philosophy were to be orderly and steadfast, not, as now,
any chance aspirant or intruder?

Very true.

Suppose, I said, the study of philosophy to take the place of
gymnastics and to be continued diligently and earnestly and exclusively
for twice the number of years which were passed in bodily exercise—will
that be enough?

Would you say six or four years? he asked.

Say five years, I replied; at the end of the time they must be sent
down again into the den and compelled to hold any military or other
office which young men are qualified to hold: in this way they will get
their experience of life, and there will be an opportunity of trying
whether, when they are drawn all manner of ways by temptation, they
will stand firm or flinch.

And how long is this stage of their lives to last?

Fifteen years, I answered; and when they have reached fifty years of
age, then let those who still survive and have distinguished themselves
in every action of their lives and in every branch of knowledge come at
last to their consummation: the time has now arrived at which they must
raise the eye of the soul to the universal light which lightens all
things, and behold the absolute good; for that is the pattern according
to which they are to order the State and the lives of individuals, and
the remainder of their own lives also; making philosophy their chief
pursuit, but, when their turn comes, toiling also at politics and
ruling for the public good, not as though they were performing some
heroic action, but simply as a matter of duty; and when they have
brought up in each generation others like themselves and left them in
their place to be governors of the State, then they will depart to the
Islands of the Blest and dwell there; and the city will give them
public memorials and sacrifices and honour them, if the Pythian oracle
consent, as demigods, but if not, as in any case blessed and divine.

You are a sculptor, Socrates, and have made statues of our governors
faultless in beauty.

Yes, I said, Glaucon, and of our governesses too; for you must not
suppose that what I have been saying applies to men only and not to
women as far as their natures can go.

There you are right, he said, since we have made them to share in all
things like the men.

Well, I said, and you would agree (would you not?) that what has been
said about the State and the government is not a mere dream, and
although difficult not impossible, but only possible in the way which
has been supposed; that is to say, when the true philosopher kings are
born in a State, one or more of them, despising the honours of this
present world which they deem mean and worthless, esteeming above all
things right and the honour that springs from right, and regarding
justice as the greatest and most necessary of all things, whose
ministers they are, and whose principles will be exalted by them when
they set in order their own city?

How will they proceed?

They will begin by sending out into the country all the inhabitants of
the city who are more than ten years old, and will take possession of
their children, who will be unaffected by the habits of their parents;
these they will train in their own habits and laws, I mean in the laws
which we have given them: and in this way the State and constitution of
which we were speaking will soonest and most easily attain happiness,
and the nation which has such a constitution will gain most.

Yes, that will be the best way. And I think, Socrates, that you have
very well described how, if ever, such a constitution might come into
being.

Enough then of the perfect State, and of the man who bears its
image—there is no difficulty in seeing how we shall describe him.

There is no difficulty, he replied; and I agree with you in thinking
that nothing more need be said.




 BOOK VIII.


And so, Glaucon, we have arrived at the conclusion that in the perfect
State wives and children are to be in common; and that all education
and the pursuits of war and peace are also to be common, and the best
philosophers and the bravest warriors are to be their kings?

That, replied Glaucon, has been acknowledged.

Yes, I said; and we have further acknowledged that the governors, when
appointed themselves, will take their soldiers and place them in houses
such as we were describing, which are common to all, and contain
nothing private, or individual; and about their property, you remember
what we agreed?

Yes, I remember that no one was to have any of the ordinary possessions
of mankind; they were to be warrior athletes and guardians, receiving
from the other citizens, in lieu of annual payment, only their
maintenance, and they were to take care of themselves and of the whole
State.

True, I said; and now that this division of our task is concluded, let
us find the point at which we digressed, that we may return into the
old path.

There is no difficulty in returning; you implied, then as now, that you
had finished the description of the State: you said that such a State
was good, and that the man was good who answered to it, although, as
now appears, you had more excellent things to relate both of State and
man. And you said further, that if this was the true form, then the
others were false; and of the false forms, you said, as I remember,
that there were four principal ones, and that their defects, and the
defects of the individuals corresponding to them, were worth examining.
When we had seen all the individuals, and finally agreed as to who was
the best and who was the worst of them, we were to consider whether the
best was not also the happiest, and the worst the most miserable. I
asked you what were the four forms of government of which you spoke,
and then Polemarchus and Adeimantus put in their word; and you began
again, and have found your way to the point at which we have now
arrived.

Your recollection, I said, is most exact.

Then, like a wrestler, he replied, you must put yourself again in the
same position; and let me ask the same questions, and do you give me
the same answer which you were about to give me then.

Yes, if I can, I will, I said.

I shall particularly wish to hear what were the four constitutions of
which you were speaking.

That question, I said, is easily answered: the four governments of
which I spoke, so far as they have distinct names, are, first, those of
Crete and Sparta, which are generally applauded; what is termed
oligarchy comes next; this is not equally approved, and is a form of
government which teems with evils: thirdly, democracy, which naturally
follows oligarchy, although very different: and lastly comes tyranny,
great and famous, which differs from them all, and is the fourth and
worst disorder of a State. I do not know, do you? of any other
constitution which can be said to have a distinct character. There are
lordships and principalities which are bought and sold, and some other
intermediate forms of government. But these are nondescripts and may be
found equally among Hellenes and among barbarians.

Yes, he replied, we certainly hear of many curious forms of government
which exist among them.

Do you know, I said, that governments vary as the dispositions of men
vary, and that there must be as many of the one as there are of the
other? For we cannot suppose that States are made of ‘oak and rock,’
and not out of the human natures which are in them, and which in a
figure turn the scale and draw other things after them?

Yes, he said, the States are as the men are; they grow out of human
characters.

Then if the constitutions of States are five, the dispositions of
individual minds will also be five?

Certainly.

Him who answers to aristocracy, and whom we rightly call just and good,
we have already described.

We have.

Then let us now proceed to describe the inferior sort of natures, being
the contentious and ambitious, who answer to the Spartan polity; also
the oligarchical, democratical, and tyrannical. Let us place the most
just by the side of the most unjust, and when we see them we shall be
able to compare the relative happiness or unhappiness of him who leads
a life of pure justice or pure injustice. The enquiry will then be
completed. And we shall know whether we ought to pursue injustice, as
Thrasymachus advises, or in accordance with the conclusions of the
argument to prefer justice.

Certainly, he replied, we must do as you say.

Shall we follow our old plan, which we adopted with a view to
clearness, of taking the State first and then proceeding to the
individual, and begin with the government of honour?—I know of no name
for such a government other than timocracy, or perhaps timarchy. We
will compare with this the like character in the individual; and, after
that, consider oligarchy and the oligarchical man; and then again we
will turn our attention to democracy and the democratical man; and
lastly, we will go and view the city of tyranny, and once more take a
look into the tyrant’s soul, and try to arrive at a satisfactory
decision.

That way of viewing and judging of the matter will be very suitable.

First, then, I said, let us enquire how timocracy (the government of
honour) arises out of aristocracy (the government of the best).
Clearly, all political changes originate in divisions of the actual
governing power; a government which is united, however small, cannot be
moved.

Very true, he said.

In what way, then, will our city be moved, and in what manner will the
two classes of auxiliaries and rulers disagree among themselves or with
one another? Shall we, after the manner of Homer, pray the Muses to
tell us ‘how discord first arose’? Shall we imagine them in solemn
mockery, to play and jest with us as if we were children, and to
address us in a lofty tragic vein, making believe to be in earnest?

How would they address us?

After this manner:—A city which is thus constituted can hardly be
shaken; but, seeing that everything which has a beginning has also an
end, even a constitution such as yours will not last for ever, but will
in time be dissolved. And this is the dissolution:—In plants that grow
in the earth, as well as in animals that move on the earth’s surface,
fertility and sterility of soul and body occur when the circumferences
of the circles of each are completed, which in short-lived existences
pass over a short space, and in long-lived ones over a long space. But
to the knowledge of human fecundity and sterility all the wisdom and
education of your rulers will not attain; the laws which regulate them
will not be discovered by an intelligence which is alloyed with sense,
but will escape them, and they will bring children into the world when
they ought not. Now that which is of divine birth has a period which is
contained in a perfect number (i.e. a cyclical number, such as 6, which
is equal to the sum of its divisors 1, 2, 3, so that when the circle or
time represented by 6 is completed, the lesser times or rotations
represented by 1, 2, 3 are also completed.), but the period of human
birth is comprehended in a number in which first increments by
involution and evolution (or squared and cubed) obtaining three
intervals and four terms of like and unlike, waxing and waning numbers,
make all the terms commensurable and agreeable to one another.
(Probably the numbers 3, 4, 5, 6 of which the three first = the sides
of the Pythagorean triangle. The terms will then be 3 cubed, 4 cubed, 5
cubed, which together = 6 cubed = 216.) The base of these (3) with a
third added (4) when combined with five (20) and raised to the third
power furnishes two harmonies; the first a square which is a hundred
times as great (400 = 4 x 100) (Or the first a square which is 100 x
100 = 10,000. The whole number will then be 17,500 = a square of 100,
and an oblong of 100 by 75.), and the other a figure having one side
equal to the former, but oblong, consisting of a hundred numbers
squared upon rational diameters of a square (i.e. omitting fractions),
the side of which is five (7 x 7 = 49 x 100 = 4900), each of them being
less by one (than the perfect square which includes the fractions, sc.
50) or less by (Or, ‘consisting of two numbers squared upon irrational
diameters,’ etc. = 100. For other explanations of the passage see
Introduction.) two perfect squares of irrational diameters (of a square
the side of which is five = 50 + 50 = 100); and a hundred cubes of
three (27 x 100 = 2700 + 4900 + 400 = 8000). Now this number represents
a geometrical figure which has control over the good and evil of
births. For when your guardians are ignorant of the law of births, and
unite bride and bridegroom out of season, the children will not be
goodly or fortunate. And though only the best of them will be appointed
by their predecessors, still they will be unworthy to hold their
fathers’ places, and when they come into power as guardians, they will
soon be found to fail in taking care of us, the Muses, first by
under-valuing music; which neglect will soon extend to gymnastic; and
hence the young men of your State will be less cultivated. In the
succeeding generation rulers will be appointed who have lost the
guardian power of testing the metal of your different races, which,
like Hesiod’s, are of gold and silver and brass and iron. And so iron
will be mingled with silver, and brass with gold, and hence there will
arise dissimilarity and inequality and irregularity, which always and
in all places are causes of hatred and war. This the Muses affirm to be
the stock from which discord has sprung, wherever arising; and this is
their answer to us.

Yes, and we may assume that they answer truly.

Why, yes, I said, of course they answer truly; how can the Muses speak
falsely?

And what do the Muses say next?

When discord arose, then the two races were drawn different ways: the
iron and brass fell to acquiring money and land and houses and gold and
silver; but the gold and silver races, not wanting money but having the
true riches in their own nature, inclined towards virtue and the
ancient order of things. There was a battle between them, and at last
they agreed to distribute their land and houses among individual
owners; and they enslaved their friends and maintainers, whom they had
formerly protected in the condition of freemen, and made of them
subjects and servants; and they themselves were engaged in war and in
keeping a watch against them.

I believe that you have rightly conceived the origin of the change.

And the new government which thus arises will be of a form intermediate
between oligarchy and aristocracy?

Very true.

Such will be the change, and after the change has been made, how will
they proceed? Clearly, the new State, being in a mean between oligarchy
and the perfect State, will partly follow one and partly the other, and
will also have some peculiarities.

True, he said.

In the honour given to rulers, in the abstinence of the warrior class
from agriculture, handicrafts, and trade in general, in the institution
of common meals, and in the attention paid to gymnastics and military
training—in all these respects this State will resemble the former.

True.

But in the fear of admitting philosophers to power, because they are no
longer to be had simple and earnest, but are made up of mixed elements;
and in turning from them to passionate and less complex characters, who
are by nature fitted for war rather than peace; and in the value set by
them upon military stratagems and contrivances, and in the waging of
everlasting wars—this State will be for the most part peculiar.

Yes.

Yes, I said; and men of this stamp will be covetous of money, like
those who live in oligarchies; they will have, a fierce secret longing
after gold and silver, which they will hoard in dark places, having
magazines and treasuries of their own for the deposit and concealment
of them; also castles which are just nests for their eggs, and in which
they will spend large sums on their wives, or on any others whom they
please.

That is most true, he said.

And they are miserly because they have no means of openly acquiring the
money which they prize; they will spend that which is another man’s on
the gratification of their desires, stealing their pleasures and
running away like children from the law, their father: they have been
schooled not by gentle influences but by force, for they have neglected
her who is the true Muse, the companion of reason and philosophy, and
have honoured gymnastic more than music.

Undoubtedly, he said, the form of government which you describe is a
mixture of good and evil.

Why, there is a mixture, I said; but one thing, and one thing only, is
predominantly seen,—the spirit of contention and ambition; and these
are due to the prevalence of the passionate or spirited element.

Assuredly, he said.

Such is the origin and such the character of this State, which has been
described in outline only; the more perfect execution was not required,
for a sketch is enough to show the type of the most perfectly just and
most perfectly unjust; and to go through all the States and all the
characters of men, omitting none of them, would be an interminable
labour.

Very true, he replied.

Now what man answers to this form of government-how did he come into
being, and what is he like?

I think, said Adeimantus, that in the spirit of contention which
characterises him, he is not unlike our friend Glaucon.

Perhaps, I said, he may be like him in that one point; but there are
other respects in which he is very different.

In what respects?

He should have more of self-assertion and be less cultivated, and yet a
friend of culture; and he should be a good listener, but no speaker.
Such a person is apt to be rough with slaves, unlike the educated man,
who is too proud for that; and he will also be courteous to freemen,
and remarkably obedient to authority; he is a lover of power and a
lover of honour; claiming to be a ruler, not because he is eloquent, or
on any ground of that sort, but because he is a soldier and has
performed feats of arms; he is also a lover of gymnastic exercises and
of the chase.

Yes, that is the type of character which answers to timocracy.

Such an one will despise riches only when he is young; but as he gets
older he will be more and more attracted to them, because he has a
piece of the avaricious nature in him, and is not single-minded towards
virtue, having lost his best guardian.

Who was that? said Adeimantus.

Philosophy, I said, tempered with music, who comes and takes up her
abode in a man, and is the only saviour of his virtue throughout life.

Good, he said.

Such, I said, is the timocratical youth, and he is like the
timocratical State.

Exactly.

His origin is as follows:—He is often the young son of a brave father,
who dwells in an ill-governed city, of which he declines the honours
and offices, and will not go to law, or exert himself in any way, but
is ready to waive his rights in order that he may escape trouble.

And how does the son come into being?

The character of the son begins to develope when he hears his mother
complaining that her husband has no place in the government, of which
the consequence is that she has no precedence among other women.
Further, when she sees her husband not very eager about money, and
instead of battling and railing in the law courts or assembly, taking
whatever happens to him quietly; and when she observes that his
thoughts always centre in himself, while he treats her with very
considerable indifference, she is annoyed, and says to her son that his
father is only half a man and far too easy-going: adding all the other
complaints about her own ill-treatment which women are so fond of
rehearsing.

Yes, said Adeimantus, they give us plenty of them, and their complaints
are so like themselves.

And you know, I said, that the old servants also, who are supposed to
be attached to the family, from time to time talk privately in the same
strain to the son; and if they see any one who owes money to his
father, or is wronging him in any way, and he fails to prosecute them,
they tell the youth that when he grows up he must retaliate upon people
of this sort, and be more of a man than his father. He has only to walk
abroad and he hears and sees the same sort of thing: those who do their
own business in the city are called simpletons, and held in no esteem,
while the busy-bodies are honoured and applauded. The result is that
the young man, hearing and seeing all these things—hearing, too, the
words of his father, and having a nearer view of his way of life, and
making comparisons of him and others—is drawn opposite ways: while his
father is watering and nourishing the rational principle in his soul,
the others are encouraging the passionate and appetitive; and he being
not originally of a bad nature, but having kept bad company, is at last
brought by their joint influence to a middle point, and gives up the
kingdom which is within him to the middle principle of contentiousness
and passion, and becomes arrogant and ambitious.

You seem to me to have described his origin perfectly.

Then we have now, I said, the second form of government and the second
type of character?

We have.

Next, let us look at another man who, as Aeschylus says,

‘Is set over against another State;’

or rather, as our plan requires, begin with the State.

By all means.

I believe that oligarchy follows next in order.

And what manner of government do you term oligarchy?

A government resting on a valuation of property, in which the rich have
power and the poor man is deprived of it.

I understand, he replied.

Ought I not to begin by describing how the change from timocracy to
oligarchy arises?

Yes.

Well, I said, no eyes are required in order to see how the one passes
into the other.

How?

The accumulation of gold in the treasury of private individuals is the
ruin of timocracy; they invent illegal modes of expenditure; for what
do they or their wives care about the law?

Yes, indeed.

And then one, seeing another grow rich, seeks to rival him, and thus
the great mass of the citizens become lovers of money.

Likely enough.

And so they grow richer and richer, and the more they think of making a
fortune the less they think of virtue; for when riches and virtue are
placed together in the scales of the balance, the one always rises as
the other falls.

True.

And in proportion as riches and rich men are honoured in the State,
virtue and the virtuous are dishonoured.

Clearly.

And what is honoured is cultivated, and that which has no honour is
neglected.

That is obvious.

And so at last, instead of loving contention and glory, men become
lovers of trade and money; they honour and look up to the rich man, and
make a ruler of him, and dishonour the poor man.

They do so.

They next proceed to make a law which fixes a sum of money as the
qualification of citizenship; the sum is higher in one place and lower
in another, as the oligarchy is more or less exclusive; and they allow
no one whose property falls below the amount fixed to have any share in
the government. These changes in the constitution they effect by force
of arms, if intimidation has not already done their work.

Very true.

And this, speaking generally, is the way in which oligarchy is
established.

Yes, he said; but what are the characteristics of this form of
government, and what are the defects of which we were speaking?

First of all, I said, consider the nature of the qualification. Just
think what would happen if pilots were to be chosen according to their
property, and a poor man were refused permission to steer, even though
he were a better pilot?

You mean that they would shipwreck?

Yes; and is not this true of the government of anything?

I should imagine so.

Except a city?—or would you include a city?

Nay, he said, the case of a city is the strongest of all, inasmuch as
the rule of a city is the greatest and most difficult of all.

This, then, will be the first great defect of oligarchy?

Clearly.

And here is another defect which is quite as bad.

What defect?

The inevitable division: such a State is not one, but two States, the
one of poor, the other of rich men; and they are living on the same
spot and always conspiring against one another.

That, surely, is at least as bad.

Another discreditable feature is, that, for a like reason, they are
incapable of carrying on any war. Either they arm the multitude, and
then they are more afraid of them than of the enemy; or, if they do not
call them out in the hour of battle, they are oligarchs indeed, few to
fight as they are few to rule. And at the same time their fondness for
money makes them unwilling to pay taxes.

How discreditable!

And, as we said before, under such a constitution the same persons have
too many callings—they are husbandmen, tradesmen, warriors, all in one.
Does that look well?

Anything but well.

There is another evil which is, perhaps, the greatest of all, and to
which this State first begins to be liable.

What evil?

A man may sell all that he has, and another may acquire his property;
yet after the sale he may dwell in the city of which he is no longer a
part, being neither trader, nor artisan, nor horseman, nor hoplite, but
only a poor, helpless creature.

Yes, that is an evil which also first begins in this State.

The evil is certainly not prevented there; for oligarchies have both
the extremes of great wealth and utter poverty.

True.

But think again: In his wealthy days, while he was spending his money,
was a man of this sort a whit more good to the State for the purposes
of citizenship? Or did he only seem to be a member of the ruling body,
although in truth he was neither ruler nor subject, but just a
spendthrift?

As you say, he seemed to be a ruler, but was only a spendthrift.

May we not say that this is the drone in the house who is like the
drone in the honeycomb, and that the one is the plague of the city as
the other is of the hive?

Just so, Socrates.

And God has made the flying drones, Adeimantus, all without stings,
whereas of the walking drones he has made some without stings but
others have dreadful stings; of the stingless class are those who in
their old age end as paupers; of the stingers come all the criminal
class, as they are termed.

Most true, he said.

Clearly then, whenever you see paupers in a State, somewhere in that
neighborhood there are hidden away thieves, and cut-purses and robbers
of temples, and all sorts of malefactors.

Clearly.

Well, I said, and in oligarchical States do you not find paupers?

Yes, he said; nearly everybody is a pauper who is not a ruler.

And may we be so bold as to affirm that there are also many criminals
to be found in them, rogues who have stings, and whom the authorities
are careful to restrain by force?

Certainly, we may be so bold.

The existence of such persons is to be attributed to want of education,
ill-training, and an evil constitution of the State?

True.

Such, then, is the form and such are the evils of oligarchy; and there
may be many other evils.

Very likely.

Then oligarchy, or the form of government in which the rulers are
elected for their wealth, may now be dismissed. Let us next proceed to
consider the nature and origin of the individual who answers to this
State.

By all means.

Does not the timocratical man change into the oligarchical on this
wise?

How?

A time arrives when the representative of timocracy has a son: at first
he begins by emulating his father and walking in his footsteps, but
presently he sees him of a sudden foundering against the State as upon
a sunken reef, and he and all that he has is lost; he may have been a
general or some other high officer who is brought to trial under a
prejudice raised by informers, and either put to death, or exiled, or
deprived of the privileges of a citizen, and all his property taken
from him.

Nothing more likely.

And the son has seen and known all this—he is a ruined man, and his
fear has taught him to knock ambition and passion headforemost from his
bosom’s throne; humbled by poverty he takes to money-making and by mean
and miserly savings and hard work gets a fortune together. Is not such
an one likely to seat the concupiscent and covetous element on the
vacant throne and to suffer it to play the great king within him, girt
with tiara and chain and scimitar?

Most true, he replied.

And when he has made reason and spirit sit down on the ground
obediently on either side of their sovereign, and taught them to know
their place, he compels the one to think only of how lesser sums may be
turned into larger ones, and will not allow the other to worship and
admire anything but riches and rich men, or to be ambitious of anything
so much as the acquisition of wealth and the means of acquiring it.

Of all changes, he said, there is none so speedy or so sure as the
conversion of the ambitious youth into the avaricious one.

And the avaricious, I said, is the oligarchical youth?

Yes, he said; at any rate the individual out of whom he came is like
the State out of which oligarchy came.

Let us then consider whether there is any likeness between them.

Very good.

First, then, they resemble one another in the value which they set upon
wealth?

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.

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.

Yes, and they will be strong in him too.

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 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.

And surely, the miser individually will be an ignoble competitor in a
State for any prize of victory, or other object of honourable ambition;
he will not spend his money in the contest for glory; so afraid is he
of awakening his expensive 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 money-maker answers
to the oligarchical State?

There can be no doubt.

Next comes democracy; of this the origin and nature have still to be
considered by us; and then we will enquire into the ways of the
democratic man, and bring him up for judgment.

That, he said, is our method.

Well, I said, and how does the change from oligarchy into democracy
arise? Is it not on this wise?—The good at 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.

That is tolerably clear.

And in oligarchical States, from the general spread of carelessness and
extravagance, men of good family have often been reduced to beggary?

Yes, often.

And still they remain in the city; there they are, ready to sting and
fully armed, and some of them owe money, some have forfeited their
citizenship; a third class are in both predicaments; and they hate and
conspire against those who have got their property, and against
everybody else, and are eager for revolution.

That is true.

On the other hand, the men of business, stooping as they walk, and
pretending not even to see those whom they have already ruined, insert
their sting—that is, their money—into some one else who is not on his
guard against them, and recover the parent sum many times over
multiplied into a family of children: and so they make drone and pauper
to abound in the State.

Yes, he said, there are plenty of them—that is certain.

The evil blazes up like a fire; and they will not extinguish it, either
by restricting a man’s use of his own property, or by another remedy:

What other?

One which is the next best, and has the advantage of compelling the
citizens to look to their characters:—Let there be a general rule that
every one shall enter into voluntary contracts at his own risk, and
there will be less of this scandalous money-making, and the evils of
which we were speaking will be greatly lessened in the State.

Yes, they will be greatly lessened.

At present the governors, induced by the motives which I have named,
treat their subjects badly; while they and their adherents, especially
the young men of the governing class, are habituated to lead a life of
luxury and idleness both of body and mind; they do nothing, and are
incapable of resisting either pleasure or pain.

Very true.

They themselves care only for making money, and are as indifferent as
the pauper to the cultivation of virtue.

Yes, quite as indifferent.

Such is the state of affairs which prevails among them. And often
rulers and their subjects may come in one another’s way, whether on a
journey or on some other occasion of meeting, on a pilgrimage or a
march, as fellow-soldiers or fellow-sailors; aye and they may observe
the behaviour of each other in the very moment of danger—for where