Republic

There remains for consideration, said I, the tyrannical man himself—the manner of his development out of the democratic type and his character and the quality of his life, whether wretched or happy. Why, yes, he still remains, he said. Do you know, then, what it is that I still miss? What? In the matter of our desires I do not think we sufficiently distinguished their nature and number. And so long as this is lacking our inquiry will lack clearness. Well, said he, will our consideration of them not still be opportune? By all means. And observe what it is about them that I wish to consider. It is this. Of our unnecessary pleasures and appetites there are some lawless ones, I think, which probably are to be found in us all, but which, when controlled by the laws and the better desires in alliance with reason, can in some men be altogether got rid of, or so nearly so that only a few weak ones remain, while in others the remnant is stronger and more numerous. What desires do you mean? he said. Those, said I, that are awakened in sleep when the rest of the soul, the rational, gentle and dominant part, slumbers, but the beastly and savage part, replete with food and wine, gambols and, repelling sleep, endeavors to sally forth and satisfy its own instincts. You are aware that in such case there is nothing it will not venture to undertake as being released from all sense of shame and all reason. It does not shrink from attempting to lie with a mother in fancy or with anyone else, man, god or brute. It is ready for any foul deed of blood; it abstains from no food, and, in a word, falls short of no extreme of folly and shamelessness. Most true, he said. But when, I suppose, a man’s condition is healthy and sober, and he goes to sleep after arousing his rational part and entertaining it with fair words and thoughts, and attaining to clear self-consciousness, while he has neither starved nor indulged to repletion his appetitive part, so that it may be lulled to sleep and not disturb the better part by its pleasure or pain, but may suffer that in isolated purity to examine and reach out towards and apprehend some of the things unknown to it, past, present or future;

and when he has in like manner tamed his passionate part, and does not after a quarrel fall asleep with anger still awake within him, but if he has thus quieted the two elements in his soul and quickened the third, in which reason resides, and so goes to his rest, you are aware that in such case he is most likely to apprehend truth, and the visions of his dreams are least likely to be lawless. I certainly think so, he said. This description has carried us too far, but the point that we have to notice is this, that in fact there exists in every one of us, even in some reputed most respectable, a terrible, fierce and lawless brood of desires, which it seems are revealed in our sleep. Consider, then, whether there is anything in what I say, and whether you admit it. Well, I do. Now recall our characterization of the democratic man. His development was determined by his education from youth under a thrifty father who approved only the acquisitive appetites and disapproved the unnecessary ones whose object is entertainment and display. Is not that so? Yes. And by association with more sophisticated men, teeming with the appetites we have just described, he is impelled towards every form of insolence and outrage, and to the adoption of their way of life by his hatred of his father’s niggardliness. But since his nature is better than that of his corrupters, being drawn both ways he settles down in a compromise between the two tendencies, and indulging and enjoying each in moderation, forsooth, as he supposes, he lives what he deems a life that is neither illiberal nor lawless, now transformed from an oligarch to a democrat. That was and is our belief about this type. Assume, then, again, said I, that such a man when he is older has a son bred in turn in his ways of life. I so assume. And suppose the experience of his father to be repeated in his case. He is drawn toward utter lawlessness, which is called by his seducers complete freedom. His father and his other kin lend support to these compromise appetites while the others lend theirs to the opposite group.

And when these dread magi and king-makers come to realize that they have no hope of controlling the youth in any other way, they contrive to engender in his soul a ruling passion to be the protector of his idle and prodigal appetites, a monstrous winged drone. Or do you think the spirit of desire in such men is aught else? Nothing but that, he said. And when the other appetites, buzzing about it, replete with incense and myrrh and chaplets and wine, and the pleasures that are released in such revelries, magnifying and fostering it to the utmost, awaken in the drone the sting of unsatisfied yearnings, why then this protector of the soul has madness for his body-guard and runs amuck, and if it finds in the man any opinions or appetites accounted worthy and still capable of shame, it slays them and thrusts them forth until it purges him of sobriety, and fills and infects him with frenzy brought in from outside. A perfect description, he said, of the generation of the tyrannical man. And is not this analogy, said I, the reason why Love has long since been called a tyrant? That may well be, he said. And does not a drunken man, my friend, I said, have something of this tyrannical temper? Yes, he has. And again the madman, the deranged man, attempts and expects to rule over not only men but gods. Yes indeed, he does, he said. Then a man becomes tyrannical in the full sense of the word, my friend, I said, when either by nature or by habits or by both he has become even as the drunken, the erotic, the maniacal. Assuredly. Such, it seems, is his origin and character, but what is his manner of life? As the wits say, you shall tell me. I do, I said; for, I take it, next there are among them feasts and carousals and revellings and courtesans and all the doings of those whose souls are entirely swayed by the indwelling tyrant Eros. Inevitably, he said. And do not many and dread appetites shoot up beside this master passion every day and night in need of many things? Many indeed. And so any revenues there may be are quickly expended. Of course.

And after this there are borrowings and levyings upon the estate? Of course. And when all these resources fail, must there not come a cry from the frequent and fierce nestlings of desire hatched in his soul, and must not such men, urged, as it were by goads, by the other desires, and especially by the ruling passion itself as captain of their bodyguard—to keep up the figure—must they not run wild and look to see who has aught that can be taken from him by deceit or violence? Most certainly. And so he is compelled to sweep it in from every source or else be afflicted with great travail and pain. He is. And just as the new, upspringing pleasures in him got the better of the original passions of his soul and robbed them, so he himself, though younger, will claim the right to get the better of his father and mother, and, after spending his own share, to seize and convert to his own use a portion of his father’s estate. Of course, he said, what else? And if they resist him, would he not at first attempt to rob and steal from his parents and deceive them? Certainly. And if he failed in that, would he not next seize it by force? I think so, he said. And then, good sir, if the old man and the old woman clung to it and resisted him, would he be careful to refrain from the acts of a tyrant? I am not without my fears, he said, for the parents of such a one. Nay, Adeimantus, in heaven’s name, do you suppose that, for the sake of a newly found belle amie bound to him by no necessary tie, such a one would strike the dear mother, his by necessity and from his birth? Or for the sake of a blooming new-found bel ami, not necessary to his life, he would rain blows upon the aged father past his prime, closest of his kin and oldest of his friends? And would he subject them to those new favorites if he brought them under the same roof? Yes, by Zeus, he said. A most blessed lot it seems to be, said I, to be the parent of a tyrant son. It does indeed, he said. And again, when the resources of his father and mother are exhausted and fail such a one, and the swarm of pleasures collected in his soul is grown great, will he not first lay hands on the wall of someone’s house or the cloak of someone who walks late at night, and thereafter he will make a clean sweep of some temple, and in all these actions the beliefs which he held from boyhood about the honorable and the base, the opinions accounted just, will be overmastered by the opinions newly emancipated and released, which, serving as bodyguards of the ruling passion, will prevail in alliance with it—I mean the opinions that formerly were freed from restraint in sleep, when, being still under the control of his father and the laws, he maintained the democratic constitution in his soul.

But now, when under the tyranny of his ruling passion, he is continuously and in waking hours what he rarely became in sleep, and he will refrain from no atrocity of murder nor from any food or deed, but the passion that dwells in him as a tyrant will live in utmost anarchy and lawlessness, and, since it is itself sole autocrat, will urge the polity, so to speak, of him in whom it dwells to dare anything and everything in order to find support for himself and the hubbub of his henchmen, in part introduced from outside by evil associations, and in part released and liberated within by the same habits of life as his. Is not this the life of such a one? It is this, he said. And if, I said, there are only a few of this kind in a city, and the others, the multitude as a whole, are sober-minded, the few go forth into exile and serve some tyrant elsewhere as bodyguard or become mercenaries in any war there may be. But if they spring up in time of peace and tranquillity they stay right there in the city and effect many small evils. What kind of evils do you mean? Oh, they just steal, break into houses, cut purses, strip men of their garments, plunder temples, and kidnap, and if they are fluent speakers they become sycophants and bear false witness and take bribes. Yes, small evils indeed, he said, if the men of this sort are few. Why, yes, I said, for small evils are relatively small compared with great, and in respect of the corruption and misery of a state all of them together, as the saying goes, don’t come within hail of the mischief done by a tyrant. For when men of this sort and their followers become numerous in a state and realize their numbers, then it is they who, in conjunction with the folly of the people, create a tyrant out of that one of them who has the greatest and mightiest tyrant in his own soul. Naturally, he said, for he would be the most tyrannical. Then if the people yield willingly—’tis well, but if the city resists him, then, just as in the previous case the man chastized his mother and his father, so now in turn will he chastize his fatherland if he can, bringing in new boon companions beneath whose sway he will hold and keep enslaved his once dear motherland—as the Cretans name her—and fatherland. And this would be the end of such a man’s desire. Yes, he said, this, just this.

Then, said I, is not this the character of such men in private life and before they rule the state: to begin with they associate with flatterers, who are ready to do anything to serve them, or, if they themselves want something, they themselves fawn and shrink from no contortion or abasement in protest of their friendship, though, once the object gained, they sing another tune. Yes indeed, he said. Throughout their lives, then, they never know what it is to be the friends of anybody. They are always either masters or slaves, but the tyrannical nature never tastes freedom or true friendship. Quite so. May we not rightly call such men faithless? Of course. Yes, and unjust to the last degree, if we were right in our previous agreement about the nature of justice. But surely, he said, we were right. Let us sum up, then, said I, the most evil type of man. He is, I presume, the man who, in his waking hours, has the qualities we found in his dream state. Quite so. And he is developed from the man who, being by nature most of a tyrant, achieves sole power, and the longer he lives as an actual tyrant the stronger this quality becomes. Inevitably, said Glaucon, taking up the argument. And shall we find, said I, that the man who is shown to be the most evil will also be the most miserable, and the man who is most of a tyrant for the longest time is most and longest miserable in sober truth? Yet the many have many opinions. That much, certainly, he said, must needs be true. Does not the tyrannical man, said I, correspond to the tyrannical state in similitude, the democratic to the democratic and the others likewise? Surely. And may we not infer that the relation of state to state in respect of virtue and happiness is the same as that of the man to the man? Of course. What is, then, in respect of virtue, the relation of a city ruled by a tyrant to a royal city as we first described it? They are direct contraries, he said; the one is the best, the other the worst. I’ll not ask which is which, I said, because that is obvious. But again in respect of happiness and wretchedness, is your estimate the same or different? And let us not be dazzled by fixing our eyes on that one man, the tyrant, or a few of his court, but let us enter into and survey the entire city, as is right, and declare our opinion only after we have so dived to its uttermost recesses and contemplated its life as a whole. That is a fair challenge, he said, and it is clear to everybody that there is no city more wretched than that in which a tyrant rules, and none more happy than that governed by a true king.

And would it not also be a fair challenge, said I, to ask you to accept as the only proper judge of the two men the one who is able in thought to enter with understanding into the very soul and temper of a man, and who is not like a child viewing him from outside, overawed by the tyrants’ great attendance, and the pomp and circumstance which they assume in the eyes of the world, but is able to see through it all? And what if I should assume, then, that the man to whom we ought all to listen is he who has this capacity of judgement and who has lived under the same roof with a tyrant and has witnessed his conduct in his own home and observed in person his dealings with his intimates in each instance where he would best be seen stripped of his vesture of tragedy, and who had likewise observed his behavior in the hazards of his public life—and if we should ask the man who has seen all this to be the messenger to report on the happiness or misery of the tyrant as compared with other men? That also would be a most just challenge, he said. Shall we, then, make believe, said I, that we are of those who are thus able to judge and who have ere now lived with tyrants, so that we may have someone to answer our questions? By all means. Come, then, said I, examine it thus. Recall the general likeness between the city and the man, and then observe in turn what happens to each of them. What things? he said. In the first place, said I, will you call the state governed by a tyrant free or enslaved, speaking of it as a state? Utterly enslaved, he said. And yet you see in it masters and freemen. I see, he said, a small portion of such, but the entirety, so to speak, and the best part of it, is shamefully and wretchedly enslaved. If, then, I said, the man resembles the state, must not the same proportion obtain in him, and his soul teem with boundless servility and illiberality, the best and most reasonable parts of it being enslaved, while a small part, the worst and the most frenzied, plays the despot? Inevitably, he said. Then will you say that such a soul is enslaved or free? Enslaved, I should suppose. Again, does not the enslaved and tyrannized city least of all do what it really wishes? Decidedly so. Then the tyrannized soul— to speak of the soul as a whole—also will least of all do what it wishes, but being always perforce driven and drawn by the gadfly of desire it will be full of confusion and repentance. Of course. And must the tyrannized city be rich or poor? Poor.

Then the tyrant soul also must of necessity always be needy and suffer from unfulfilled desire. So it is, he said. And again, must not such a city, as well as such a man, be full of terrors and alarms? It must indeed. And do you think you will find more lamentations and groans and wailing and anguish in any other city? By no means. And so of man, do you think these things will more abound in any other than in this tyrant type, that is maddened by its desires and passions? How could it be so? he said. In view of all these and other like considerations, then, I take it, you judged that this city is the most miserable of cities. And was I not right? he said. Yes, indeed, said I. But of the tyrant man, what have you to say in view of these same things? That he is far and away the most miserable of all, he said. I cannot admit, said I, that you are right in that too. How so? said he. This one, said I, I take it, has not yet attained the acme of misery. Then who has? Perhaps you will regard the one I am about to name as still more wretched. What one? The one, said I, who, being of tyrannical temper, does not live out his life in private station but is so unfortunate that by some unhappy chance he is enabled to become an actual tyrant. I infer from what has already been said, he replied, that you speak truly. Yes, said I, but it is not enough to suppose such things. We must examine them thoroughly by reason and an argument such as this. For our inquiry concerns the greatest of all things, the good life or the bad life. Quite right, he replied. Consider, then, if there is anything in what I say. For I think we must get a notion of the matter from these examples. From which? From individual wealthy private citizens in our states who possess many slaves. For these resemble the tyrant in being rulers over many, only the tyrant’s numbers are greater. Yes, they are. You are aware, then, that they are unafraid and do not fear their slaves? What should they fear? Nothing, I said; but do you perceive the reason why? Yes, because the entire state is ready to defend each citizen. You are right, I said. But now suppose some god should catch up a man who has fifty or more slaves and waft him with his wife and children away from the city and set him down with his other possessions and his slaves in a solitude where no freeman could come to his rescue. What and how great would be his fear, do you suppose, lest he and his wife and children be destroyed by the slaves? The greatest in the world, he said, if you ask me.

And would he not forthwith find it necessary to fawn upon some of the slaves and make them many promises and emancipate them, though nothing would be further from his wish? And so he would turn out to be the flatterer of his own servants. He would certainly have to, he said, or else perish. But now suppose, said I, that god established round about him numerous neighbors who would not tolerate the claim of one man to be master of another, but would inflict the utmost penalties on any such person on whom they could lay their hands. I think, he said, that his plight would be still more desperate, encompassed by nothing but enemies. And is not that the sort of prison-house in which the tyrant is pent, being of a nature such as we have described and filled with multitudinous and manifold terrors and appetites? Yet greedy and avid of spirit as he is, he only of the citizens may not travel abroad or view any of the sacred festivals that other freemen yearn to see, but he must live for the most part cowering in the recesses of his house like a woman, envying among the other citizens anyone who goes abroad and sees any good thing. Most certainly, he said. And does not such a harvest of ills measure the difference between the man who is merely ill-governed in his own soul, the man of tyrannical temper, whom you just now judged to be most miserable, and the man who, having this disposition, does not live out his life in private station but is constrained by some ill hap to become an actual tyrant, and while unable to control himself attempts to rule over others, as if a man with a sick and incontinent body should not live the private life but should be compelled to pass his days in contention and strife with other persons? Your analogy is most apt and true, Socrates, he said. Is not that then, dear Glaucon, said I, a most unhappy experience in every way? And is not the tyrant’s life still worse than that which was judged by you to be the worst? Precisely so, he said. Then it is the truth, though some may deny it, that the real tyrant is really enslaved to cringings and servitudes beyond compare, a flatterer of the basest men, and that, so far from finding even the least satisfaction for his desires, he is in need of most things, and is a poor man in very truth, as is apparent if one knows how to observe a soul in its entirety; and throughout his life he teems with terrors and is full of convulsions and pains, if in fact he resembles the condition of the city which he rules; and he is like it, is he not? Yes, indeed, he said.

And in addition, shall we not further attribute to him all that we spoke of before, and say that he must needs be, and, by reason of his rule, come to be still more than he was, envious, faithless, unjust, friendless, impious, a vessel and nurse of all iniquity, and so in consequence be himself most unhappy make all about him so? No man of sense will gainsay that, he said. Come then, said I, now at last, even as the judge of last instance pronounces, so do you declare who in your opinion is first in happiness and who second, and similarly judge the others, all five in succession, the royal, the timocratic, the oligarchic, the democratic, and the tyrannical man. Nay, he said, the decision is easy. For as if they were choruses I judge them in the order of their entrance, and so rank them in respect of virtue and vice, happiness and its contrary. Shall we hire a herald, then, said I, or shall I myself make proclamation that the son of Ariston pronounced the best man and the most righteous to be the happiest, and that he is the one who is the most kingly and a king over himself; and declared that the most evil and most unjust is the most unhappy, who again is the man who, having the most of the tyrannical temper in himself, become, most of a tyrant over himself and over the state? Let it have been so proclaimed by you, he said. Shall I add the clause alike whether their character is known to all men and gods or is not known? Add that to the proclamation, he said. Very good, said I; this, then, would be one of our proofs, but examine this second one and see if there is anything in it. What is it? Since, said I, corresponding to the three types in the city, the soul also is tripartite, it will admit, I think, of another demonstration also. What is that? The following: The three parts have also, it appears to me, three kinds of pleasure, one peculiar to each, and similarly three appetites and controls. What do you mean? he said. One part, we say, is that with which a man learns, one is that with which he feels anger. But the third part, owing to its manifold forms, we could not easily designate by any one distinctive name, but gave it the name of its chief and strongest element;

for we called it the appetitive part because of the intensity of its appetites concerned with food and drink and love and their accompaniments, and likewise the money-loving part, because money is the chief instrument for the gratification of such desires. And rightly, he said. And if we should also say that its pleasure and its love were for gain or profit, should we not thus best bring it together under one head in our discourse so as to understand each other when we speak of this part of the soul, and justify our calling it the money-loving and gain-loving part? I, at any rate, think so, he said. And, again, of the high-spirited element, do we not say that it is wholly set on predominance and victory and good repute? Yes, indeed. And might we not appropriately designate it as the ambitious part and that which is covetous of honor? Most appropriately. But surely it is obvious to everyone that all the endeavor of the part by which we learn is ever towards knowledge of the truth of things, and that it least of the three is concerned for wealth and reputation. Much the least. Lover of learning and lover of wisdom would be suitable designations for that. Quite so, he said. Is it not also true, I said, that the ruling principle of men’s souls is in some cases this faculty and in others one of the other two, as it may happen? That is so, he said. And that is why we say that the primary classes of men also are three, the philosopher or lover of wisdom, the lover of victory and the lover of gain. Precisely so And also that there are three forms of pleasure, corresponding respectively to each? By all means. Are you aware, then said I, that if you should choose to ask men of these three classes, each in turn, which is the most pleasurable of these lives, each will chiefly commend his own? The financier will affirm that in comparison with profit the pleasures of honor or of learning area of no value except in so far as they produce money. True, he said. And what of the lover of honor? I said; does he not regard the pleasure that comes from money as vulgar and low, and again that of learning, save in so far as the knowledge confers honor, mere fume and moonshine? It is so, he said. And what, said I, are we to suppose the philosopher thinks of the other pleasures compared with the delight of knowing the truth and the reality, and being always occupied with that while he learns? Will he not think them far removed from true pleasure, and call them literally the pleasures of necessity, since he would have no use for them if necessity were not laid upon him?