Republic

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.