Republic

Shall we definitely assert, then, that such a man is to be ranged with democracy and would properly be designated as democratic? Let that be his place, he said. And now, said I, the fairest polity and the fairest man remain for us to describe, the tyranny and the tyrant. Certainly, he said. Come then, tell me, dear friend, how tyranny arises. That it is an outgrowth of democracy is fairly plain. Yes, plain. Is it, then, in a sense, in the same way in which democracy arises out of oligarchy that tyranny arises from democracy? How is that? The good that they proposed to themselves and that was the cause of the establishment of oligarchy—it was wealth, was it not? Yes. Well, then, the insatiate lust for wealth and the neglect of everything else for the sake of money-making was the cause of its undoing. True, he said. And is not the avidity of democracy for that which is its definition and criterion of good the thing which dissolves it too? What do you say its criterion to be? Liberty, I replied; for you may hear it said that this is best managed in a democratic city, and for this reason that is the only city in which a man of free spirit will care to live. Why, yes, he replied, you hear that saying everywhere. Then, as I was about to observe, is it not the excess and greed of this and the neglect of all other things that revolutionizes this constitution too and prepares the way for the necessity of a dictatorship? How? he said. Why, when a democratic city athirst for liberty gets bad cupbearers for its leaders and is intoxicated by drinking too deep of that unmixed wine, and then, if its so-called governors are not extremely mild and gentle with it and do not dispense the liberty unstintedly,it chastises them and accuses them of being accursed oligarchs. Yes, that is what they do, he replied. But those who obey the rulers, I said, it reviles as willing slaves and men of naught, but it commends and honors in public and private rulers who resemble subjects and subjects who are like rulers. Is it not inevitable that in such a state the spirit of liberty should go to all lengths? Of course. And this anarchical temper, said I, my friend, must penetrate into private homes and finally enter into the very animals. Just what do we mean by that? he said.