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Very true.
At length they seize upon the citadel of the young man’s soul, which they
perceive to be void of all accomplishments and fair pursuits and true words,
which make their abode in the minds of men who are dear to the gods, and are
their best guardians and sentinels.
None better.
False and boastful conceits and phrases mount upward and take their place.
They are certain to do so.
And so the young man returns into the country of the lotuseaters, and takes
up his dwelling there, in the face of all men; and if any help be sent by his
friends to the oligarchical part of him, the aforesaid vain conceits shut the
gate of the King’s fastness; and they will neither allow the embassy itself to
enter, nor if private advisers offer the fatherly counsel of the aged will they
listen to them or receive them. There is a battle and they gain the day, and
then modesty, which they call silliness, is ignominiously thrust into exile by
them, and temperance, which they nick-name unmanliness, is trampled in the
mire and cast forth; they persuade men that moderation and orderly
expenditure are vulgarity and meanness, and so, by the help of a rabble of evil
appetites, they drive them beyond the border.
Yes, with a will.
And when they have emptied and swept clean the soul of him who is now
in their power and who is being initiated by them in great mysteries, the next
thing is to bring back to their house insolence and anarchy and waste and
impudence in bright array, having garlands on their heads, and a great
company with them, hymning their praises and calling them by sweet names;
insolence they term “breeding,” and anarchy “liberty,” and waste
“magnificence,” and impudence ” courage.” And so the young man passes out
of his original nature, which was trained in the school of necessity, into the
freedom and libertinism of useless and unnecessary pleasures.
Yes, he said, the change in him is visible enough.
After this he lives on, spending his money and labor and time on
unnecessary pleasures quite as much as on necessary ones; but if he be
fortunate, and is not too much disordered in his wits, when years have
elapsed, and the heyday of passion is over—supposing that he then readmits
into the city some part of the exiled virtues, and does not wholly give himself
up to their successors—in that case he balances his pleasures and lives in a
sort of equilibrium, putting the government of himself into the hands of the
one which comes first and wins the turn; and when he has had enough of that,
1255
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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