wants to drive him out, he will find that he is weak and his son

strong.

Why, you do not mean to say that the tyrant will use violence? What! beat his father if he opposes him?

Yes, he will; and he will begin by taking away his arms. Then he is a parricide, and a cruel unnatural son to an aged parent whom he ought to cherish; and this is real tyranny, about which there is no mistake: as the saying is, the people who would escape the smoke which is the slavery of freemen, has fallen into the fire which is the tyranny of slaves. Thus liberty, getting out of all order and reason, passes into the harshest and bitterest form of slavery.

True, he said.

Very well; and may we not say that we have discussed enough the nature of tyranny, and the manner of the transition from democracy to tyranny?

Yes, quite enough, he said.

571

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 I should like to consider.

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 perplexed.

Well, but you may supply the omission.

Very true, I said; and observe the point which I want to understand. Certain of the unnecessary pleasures and appetites are deemed 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 are 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; when the wild beast in our nature, gorged with meat or drink, starts up and leaps about and seeks to go and satisfy his desires, there is no conceivable folly or crime, however shameless or unnatural-not excepting incest or parricide, or the eating of forbidden food-of which at such a time, you know, a man may not believe himself to be capable. 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 572 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 fanciful 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 latent wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep. Pray, consider whether I am right, and you agree with me.

Yes, I agree.

Remember then the character which we assigned to the democratic man. He was supposed from his youth upwards to have been trained under a miserly parent, and to have encouraged the saving appetites, and discountenanced the lighter and more ornamental ones?

True.

And then he got into the company of a more refined, licentious sort of people, and he took to their fashions, and began to have a dislike of his father's narrow ways. At last, being a better man than his corruptors, he was drawn in opposite directions and coming to a mean led a life, not of lawless and slavish passion, but of what he deemed moderate indulgences in various pleaAfter this manner the democrat was generated out of

sures.

the oligarch?

Yes, he said; that is and always has been our view of him. And now, I said, years will have passed away, and you must imagine this man, such as he is, to have a son, who is brought up in his father's principles; and then further imagine the same thing to happen to the son which has already happened to the father: he is seduced into a perfectly lawless life, which is termed perfect liberty; and while his father and friends take part with

his moderate desires, the corruptors assist the opposite ones. These dire magicians and tyrant-makers at length begin to fear 573 that they will be unable to hold the youth, and then they contrive to implant in him a master passion, to be lord over his idle and spendthrift desires-like a monstrous winged drone-that is the only image which will adequately describe him.

Yes, he said, that is the only image of him.

And while the other lusts, amid clouds of incense and perfumes and garlands and wines, and all the dissoluteness of social life, are buzzing around him and flattering him to the utmost, there is implanted in him the sting of desire, and then this lord of his soul is in a frenzy; madness is the captain of the guard; and if he finds in himself any good opinions or appetites in process of formation, which have a sense of shame remaining, he puts an end to them, 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?

Exactly.

Such is the man and such is his origin. And next, how does he live?

That, as people facetiously say, you may as well 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.

T

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 he borrows, and part of his estate is taken from him.
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 on whom they dance 574 attendance, is at his wits' end to 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 pangs and pains.

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 cannot, then he will plunder and force them.
Yes, probably.

And if the old man and woman struggle and fight, will the creature be very careful not to do anything which is tyrannical? Nay, he said, I should not feel at all comfortable about his parents.

But, O heavens! Adeimantus, on account of some new-fangled 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 indis