|
LAST of all comes the tyrannical man; about whom we have once more
to ask, how is he formed out of the democratical? and how does he
live, in happiness or in misery?
Yes, he said, he is the only one remaining.
There is, however, I said, a previous question which remains
unanswered.
What question?
I do not think that we have adequately determined the nature and
number of the appetites, and until this is accomplished the enquiry
will always be confused.
Well, he said, it is not too late to supply the omission.
Very true, I said; and observe the point which I want to understand:
Certain of the unnecessary pleasures and appetites I conceive to be
unlawful; every one appears to have them, but in some persons they are
controlled by the laws and by reason, and the better desires prevail
over them-either they are wholly banished or they become few and weak;
while in the case of others they are stronger, and there are more of
them.
Which appetites do you mean?
I mean those which are awake when the reasoning and human and ruling
power is asleep; then the wild beast within us, gorged with meat or
drink, starts up and having shaken off sleep, goes forth to satisfy
his desires; and there is no conceivable folly or crime --not
excepting incest or any other unnatural union, or parricide, or the
eating of forbidden food --which at such a time, when he has parted
company with all shame and sense, a man may not be ready to commit.
Most true, he said.
But when a man's pulse is healthy and temperate, and when before
going to sleep he has awakened his rational powers, and fed them on
noble thoughts and enquiries, collecting himself in meditation;
after having first indulged his appetites neither too much nor too
little, but just enough to lay them to sleep, and prevent them and
their enjoyments and pains from interfering with the higher
principle --which he leaves in the solitude of pure abstraction,
free to contemplate and aspire to the knowledge of the unknown,
whether in past, present, or future: when again he has allayed the
passionate element, if he has a quarrel against any one --I say, when,
after pacifying the two irrational principles, he rouses up the third,
which is reason, before he takes his rest, then, as you know, he
attains truth most nearly, and is least likely to be the sport of
fantastic and lawless visions.
I quite agree.
In saying this I have been running into a digression; but the
point which I desire to note is that in all of us, even in good men,
there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.
Pray, consider whether I am right, and you agree with me.
Yes, I agree.
And now remember the character which we attributed to the democratic
man. He was supposed from his youth upwards to have been trained under
a miserly parent, who encouraged the saving appetites in him, but
discountenanced the unnecessary, which aim only at amusement and
ornament?
True.
And then he got into the company of a more refined, licentious
sort of people, and taking to all their wanton ways rushed into the
opposite extreme from an abhorrence of his father's meanness. At last,
being a better man than his corruptors, he was drawn in both
directions until he halted midway and led a life, not of vulgar and
slavish passion, but of what he deemed moderate indulgence in
various pleasures. After this manner the democrat was generated out of
the oligarch?
Yes, he said; that was our view of him, and is so still.
And now, I said, years will have passed away, and you must
conceive this man, such as he is, to have a son, who is brought up
in his father's principles.
I can imagine him.
Then you must further imagine the same thing to happen to the son
which has already happened to the father: --he is drawn into a
perfectly lawless life, which by his seducers is termed perfect
liberty; and his father and friends take part with his moderate
desires, and the opposite party assist the opposite ones. As soon as
these dire magicians and tyrant-makers find that they are losing their
hold on him, they contrive to implant in him a master passion, to be
lord over his idle and spendthrift lusts --a sort of monstrous
winged drone --that is the only image which will adequately describe
him.
Yes, he said, that is the only adequate image of him.
And when his other lusts, amid clouds of incense and perfumes and
garlands and wines, and all the pleasures of a dissolute life, now let
loose, come buzzing around him, nourishing to the utmost the sting
of desire which they implant in his drone-like nature, then at last
this lord of the soul, having Madness for the captain of his guard,
breaks out into a frenzy: and if he finds in himself any good opinions
or appetites in process of formation, and there is in him any sense of
shame remaining, to these better principles he puts an end, and
casts them forth until he has purged away temperance and brought in
madness to the full.
Yes, he said, that is the way in which the tyrannical man is
generated.
And is not this the reason why of old love has been called a tyrant?
I should not wonder.
Further, I said, has not a drunken man also the spirit of a tyrant?
He has.
And you know that a man who is deranged and not right in his mind,
will fancy that he is able to rule, not only over men, but also over
the gods?
That he will.
And the tyrannical man in the true sense of the word comes into
being when, either under the influence of nature, or habit, or both,
he becomes drunken, lustful, passionate? O my friend, is not that so?
Assuredly.
Such is the man and such is his origin. And next, how does he live?
Suppose, as people facetiously say, you were to tell me.
I imagine, I said, at the next step in his progress, that there will
be feasts and carousals and revellings and courtezans, and all that
sort of thing; Love is the lord of the house within him, and orders
all the concerns of his soul.
That is certain.
Yes; and every day and every night desires grow up many and
formidable, and their demands are many.
They are indeed, he said.
His revenues, if he has any, are soon spent.
True.
Then comes debt and the cutting down of his property.
Of course.
When he has nothing left, must not his desires, crowding in the nest
like young ravens, be crying aloud for food; and he, goaded on by
them, and especially by love himself, who is in a manner the captain
of them, is in a frenzy, and would fain discover whom he can defraud
or despoil of his property, in order that he may gratify them?
Yes, that is sure to be the case.
He must have money, no matter how, if he is to escape horrid pains
and pangs.
He must.
And as in himself there was a succession of pleasures, and the new
got the better of the old and took away their rights, so he being
younger will claim to have more than his father and his mother, and if
he has spent his own share of the property, he will take a slice of
theirs.
No doubt he will.
And if his parents will not give way, then he will try first of
all to cheat and deceive them.
Very true.
And if he fails, then he will use force and plunder them.
Yes, probably.
And if the old man and woman fight for their own, what then, my
friend? Will the creature feel any compunction at tyrannizing over
them?
Nay, he said, I should not feel at all comfortable about his
parents.
But, O heavens! Adeimantus, on account of some newfangled love of
a harlot, who is anything but a necessary connection, can you
believe that he would strike the mother who is his ancient friend
and necessary to his very existence, and would place her under the
authority of the other, when she is brought under the same roof with
her; or that, under like circumstances, he would do the same to his
withered old father, first and most indispensable of friends, for
the sake of some newly found blooming youth who is the reverse of
indispensable?
Yes, indeed, he said; I believe that he would.
Truly, then, I said, a tyrannical son is a blessing to his father
and mother.
He is indeed, he replied.
He first takes their property, and when that falls, and pleasures
are beginning to swarm in the hive of his soul, then he breaks into
a house, or steals the garments of some nightly wayfarer; next he
proceeds to clear a temple. Meanwhile the old opinions which he had
when a child, and which gave judgment about good and evil, are
overthrown by those others which have just been emancipated, and are
now the bodyguard of love and share his empire. These in his
democratic days, when he was still subject to the laws and to his
father, were only let loose in the dreams of sleep. But now that he is
under the dominion of love, he becomes always and in waking reality
what he was then very rarely and in a dream only; he will commit the
foulest murder, or eat forbidden food, or be guilty of any other
horrid act. Love is his tyrant, and lives lordly in him and lawlessly,
and being himself a king, leads him on, as a tyrant leads a State,
to the performance of any reckless deed by which he can maintain
himself and the rabble of his associates, whether those whom evil
communications have brought in from without, or those whom he
himself has allowed to break loose within him by reason of a similar
evil nature in himself. Have we not here a picture of his way of life?
Yes, indeed, he said.
And if there are only a few of them in the State, the rest of the
people are well disposed, they go away and become the bodyguard or
mercenary soldiers of some other tyrant who may probably want them for
a war; and if there is no war, they stay at home and do many little
pieces of mischief in the city.
What sort of mischief?
For example, they are the thieves, burglars, cutpurses, footpads,
robbers of temples, man-stealers of the community; or if they are able
to speak they turn informers, and bear false witness, and take bribes.
A small catalogue of evils, even if the perpetrators of them are few
in number.
Yes, I said; but small and great are comparative terms, and all
these things, in the misery and evil which they inflict upon a
State, do not come within a thousand miles of the tyrant; when this
noxious class and their followers grow numerous and become conscious
of their strength, assisted by the infatuation of the people, they
choose from among themselves the one who has most of the tyrant in his
own soul, and him they create their tyrant.
Yes, he said, and he will be the most fit to be a tyrant.
If the people yield, well and good; but if they resist him, as he
began by beating his own father and mother, so now, if he has the
power, he beats them, and will keep his dear old fatherland or
motherland, as the Cretans say, in subjection to his young retainers
whom he has introduced to be their rulers and masters. This is the end
of his passions and desires.
Exactly.
When such men are only private individuals and before they get
power, this is their character; they associate entirely with their own
flatterers or ready tools; or if they want anything from anybody, they
in their turn are equally ready to bow down before them: they
profess every sort of affection for them; but when they have gained
their point they know them no more.
Yes, truly.
They are always either the masters or servants and never the friends
of anybody; the tyrant never tastes of true freedom or friendship.
Certainly not.
And may we not rightly call such men treacherous?
No question.
Also they are utterly unjust, if we were right in our notion of
justice?
Yes, he said, and we were perfectly right.
Let us then sum up in a word, I said, the character of the worst
man: he is the waking reality of what we dreamed.
Most true.
And this is he who being by nature most of a tyrant bears rule,
and the longer he lives the more of a tyrant he becomes.
|
|