Page - 1268 - in The Complete Plato

higher principle—which he leaves in the solitude of pure abstraction, free to contemplate and aspire to the knowledge of the unknown, whether in past, present, or future: when again he has allayed the passionate element, if he has a quarrel against anyone—I say, when, after pacifying the two irrational principles, he rouses up the third, which is reason, before he takes his rest, then, as you know, he attains truth most nearly, and is least likely to be the sport of fantastic and lawless visions. I quite agree. In saying this I have been running into a digression; but the point which I desire to note is that in all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild- beast nature, which peers out in sleep. Pray, consider whether I am right, and you agree with me. Yes, I agree. And now remember the character which we attributed to the democratic man. He was supposed from his youth upward to have been trained under a miserly parent, who encouraged the saving appetites in him, but discountenanced the unnecessary, which aim only at amusement and ornament? True. And then he got into the company of a more refined, licentious sort of people, and taking to all their wanton ways rushed into the opposite extreme from an abhorrence of his father’s meanness. At last, being a better man than his corruptors, he was drawn in both directions until he halted midway and led a life, not of vulgar and slavish passion, but of what he deemed moderate indulgence in various pleasures. After this manner the democrat was generated out of the oligarch? Yes, he said; that was our view of him, and is so still. And now, I said, years will have passed away, and you must conceive this man, such as he is, to have a son, who is brought up in his father’s principles. I can imagine him. Then you must further imagine the same thing to happen to the son which has already happened to the father: he is drawn into a perfectly lawless life, which by his seducers is termed perfect liberty; and his father and friends take part with his moderate desires, and the opposite party assist the opposite ones. As soon as these dire magicians and tyrantmakers find that they are losing their hold on him, they contrive to implant in him a master-passion, to be lord over his idle and spendthrift lusts—a sort of monstrous winged drone —that 1268