The Portable Plato - Protagoras Symposium Phaedo The Republic

by Plato

  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 laws?

  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? 138

  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? 139

  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 neighbourhood 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 torm 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 am1 bition 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 on
es, 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.140

  Excellent! I said. Yet consider: Must we not further admit that owing to this want of cultivation there will be found in him drone-like 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 friends, 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 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 danger is, there is no fear that the poor will be despised by the rich—and very likely the wiry sunburnt poor man may be placed in battle at the side of a wealthy one who has never spoilt his complexion and has plenty of superfluous flesh—when he sees such an one puffing and at his wits’-end, how can he avoid drawing the conclusion that men like him are only rich because no one has the courage to despoil them? And when they meet in private will not people be saying to one another “Our warriors are not good for much”?

  Yes, he said, I am quite aware that this is their way of talking.

  And, as in a body which is diseased the addition of a touch from without may bring on illness, and sometimes even when there is no external provocation a commotion may arise within—in the same way wherever there is weakness in the State there is also likely to be illness, of which the occasions may be very slight, the one party introducing from without their oligarchical, the other their democratical allies, and then the State falls sick, and is at war with herself; and may be at times distracted, even when there is no external cause.

  Yes, surely.

  And then democracy comes into being after the poor have conquered their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing some, while to the remainder they give an equal share of freedom and power; and this is the form of government in which the magistrates are commonly elected by lot.

  Yes, he said, that is the nature of de
mocracy, whether the revolution has been effected by arms, or whether fear has caused the opposite party to withdraw.

  And now what is their manner of life, and what sort of a government have they? for as the government is, such will be the man.

  Clearly, he said.

  In the first place, are they not free; and is npt the city full of freedom and frankness—a man may say and do what he likes?

  ‘Tis said so, he replied.

  And where freedom is, the individual is clearly able to order for himself his own life as he pleases?

  Clearly.

  Then in this kind of State there will be the greatest variety of human natures?

  There will.

  This, then, seems likely to be the fairest of States, being like an embroidered robe which is spangled with every sort of flower.141 And just as women and children think a variety of colours to be of all things most charming, so there are many men to whom this State, which is spangled with the manners and characters of mankind, will appear to be the fairest of States.

  Yes.

  Yes, my good sir, and there will be no better in which to look for a government.

  Why?

  Because of the liberty which reigns there—they have a complete assortment of constitutions; and he who has a mind to establish a State, as we have been doing, must go to a democray as he would to a bazaar at which they sell them, and pick out the one that suits him; then, when he has made his choice, he may found his State.

  He will be sure to have patterns enough.

  And there being no necessity, I said, for you to govern in this State, even if you have the capacity, or to be governed, unless you like, or go to war when the rest go to war, or to be at peace when others are at peace, unless you are so disposed—there being no necessity also, because some law forbids you to hold office or be a dicast, that you should not hold office or be a dicast, if you have a fancy—is not this a way of life which for the moment is supremely delightful?