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rogueries?
Where must I look?
You should see him where he has some great opportunity of acting
dishonestly, as in the guardianship of an orphan.
Aye.
It will be clear enough then that in his ordinary dealings which give him a
reputation for honesty, he coerces his bad passions by an enforced virtue; not
making them see that they are wrong, or taming them by reason, but by
necessity and fear constraining them, and because he trembles for his
possessions.
To be sure.
Yes, indeed, my dear friend, but you will find that the natural desires of the
drone commonly exist in him all the same whenever he has to spend what is
not his own.
Yes, and they will be strong in him, too.
The man, then, will be at war with himself; he will be two men, and not
one; but, in general, his better desires will be found to prevail over his inferior
ones.
True.
For these reasons such a one will be more respectable than most people; yet
the true virtue of a unanimous and harmonious soul will flee far away and
never come near him.
I should expect so.
And surely the miser individually will be an ignoble competitor in a State
for any prize of victory, or other object of honorable ambition; he will not
spend his money in the contest for glory; so afraid is he of awakening his
expensive appetites and inviting them to help and join in the struggle; in true
oligarchical fashion he fights with a small part only of his resources, and the
result commonly is that he loses the prize and saves his money.
Very true.
Can we any longer doubt, then, that the miser and moneymaker answers to
the oligarchical State?
There can be no doubt.
Next comes democracy; of this the origin and nature have still to be
considered by us; and then we will inquire into the ways of the democratic
1248
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book The Complete Plato"
The Complete Plato
- Title
- The Complete Plato
- Author
- Plato
- Date
- ~347 B.C.
- Language
- English
- License
- PD
- Size
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Pages
- 1612
- Keywords
- Philosophy, Antique, Philosophie, Antike, Dialogues, Metaphysik, Metaphysics, Ideologie, Ideology, Englisch
- Categories
- Geisteswissenschaften
- International