Seite - 1256 - in The Complete Plato

then into the hands of another; he despises none of them, but encourages them all equally. Very true, he said. Neither does he receive or let pass into the fortress any true word of advice; if anyone says to him that some pleasures are the satisfactions of good and noble desires, and others of evil desires, and that he ought to use and honor some, and chastise and master the others—whenever this is repeated to him he shakes his head and says that they are all alike, and that one is as good as another. Yes, he said; that is the way with him. Yes, I said, he lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the hour; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute; then he becomes a water-drinker, and tries to get thin; then he takes a turn at gymnastics; sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then once more living the life of a philosopher; often he is busy with politics, and starts to his feet and says and does whatever comes into his head; and, if he is emulous of anyone who is a warrior, off he is in that direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His life has neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he terms joy and bliss and freedom; and so he goes on. Yes, he replied, he is all liberty and equality. Yes, I said; his life is motley and manifold and an epitome of the lives of many; he answers to the State which we described as fair and spangled. And many a man and many a woman will take him for their pattern, and many a constitution and many an example of manners are contained in him. Just so. Let him then be set over against democracy; he may truly be called the democratic man. Let that be his place, he said. Last of all comes the most beautiful of all, man and State alike, tyranny and the tyrant; these we have now to consider. Quite true, he said. Say then, my friend, in what manner does tyranny arise? —that it has a democratic origin is evident. Clearly. And does not tyranny spring from democracy in the same manner as democracy from oligarchy—I mean, after a sort? 1256