Republic

Now the phrase master of himself is an absurdity, is it not? For he who is master of himself would also be subject to himself, and he who is subject to himself would be master. For the same person is spoken of in all these expressions. Of course. But, said I, the intended meaning of this way of speaking appears to me to be that the soul of a man within him has a better part and a worse part, and the expression self-mastery means the control of the worse by the naturally better part. It is, at any rate, a term of praise. But when, because of bad breeding or some association, the better part, which is the smaller, is dominated by the multitude of the worse, I think that our speech censures this as a reproach, and calls the man in this plight unselfcontrolled and licentious. That seems likely, he said. Turn your eyes now upon our new city, said I, and you will find one of these conditions existent in it. For you will say that it is justly spoken of as master of itself if that in which the superior rules the inferior is to be called sober and self-mastered. I do turn my eyes upon it, he said, and it is as you say. And again, the mob of motley appetites and pleasures and pains one would find chiefly in children and women and slaves and in the base rabble of those who are freemen in name. By all means. But the simple and moderate appetites which with the aid of reason and right opinion are guided by consideration you will find in few and those the best born and best educated. True, he said. And do you not find this too in your city and a domination there of the desires in the multitude and the rabble by the desires and the wisdom that dwell in the minority of the better? I do, he said. If, then, there is any city that deserves to be described as master of its pleasures and desires and self-mastered, this one merits that designation. Most assuredly, he said. And is it not also to be called sober in all these respects? Indeed it is, he said. And yet again, if there is any city in which the rulers and the ruled are of one mind as to who ought to rule, that condition will be found in this. Don’t you think so? I most emphatically do, he said. In which class of the citizens, then, will you say that the virtue of soberness has its seat when this is their condition? In the rulers or in the ruled? In both, I suppose, he said. Do you see then, said I, that our intuition was not a bad one just now that discerned a likeness between soberness and a kind of harmony? Why so?