Republic

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.