before going to sleep he has allayed the passionate element, if he has a quarrel against any one-I say, when, after pacifying the two irrational principles, he rouses up the third or rational element before he takes his rest, then, as you know, he attains truth most nearly, and is least likely to be the sport of fanciful and lawless visions.

In that opinion I entirely 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 such a latent wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep. Pray, consider whether I am right, and you agree with me in this view.

Yes, I agree.

Remember then the character which we assigned to the democratic man. He was supposed from his youth upwards to have been trained under a miserly parent, and to have encouraged the saving appetites, and discountenanced the lighter and more ornamental ones?

True.

And then he got into the company of a more refined, licentious sort of people, and he took to wantonness, and began to have a dislike of his father's narrow ways. At last, being a better man than his corruptors, he came to a mean, and led a life, not of lawless and slavish passion, but of regular and successive indulgence. That was our view of the way in which the democrat was generated out of the oligarch?

Yes, he said; and that is still our view.

And now, I said, years will have passed away, and you must imagine this man, such as he is, to have a son, who is brought up in his father's principles; and then further imagine the same thing to happen to the son which has already happened to the father-he is seduced into a perfectly lawless life, which is termed perfect liberty; and his father and friends take part with his moderate desires, while others assist the opposite ones. At length, these dire magicians and tyrant-makers begin to fear that they will be unable to hold the youth, and then they contrive to implant in him a master passion, to be lord over his idle and spendthrift desires-like a monster drone having wings. That is the only image which will depict him and his lusts.

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Yes, he said, that is the best, the only image of him.

And while the other lusts amid clouds of incense and perfumes and garlands and wines, and all the dissoluteness of social life are buzzing around him and flattering him to the utmost, there is implanted in him the sting of desire, and then this lord of the soul is in a frenzy-madness is the captain of the guard —and if he discerns in his soul any opinions or appetites which may be regarded as good, and which have any sense of shame remaining, he puts an end to them, and casts them forth until he has purged away temperance and brought in madness to the full.

Yes, he said, that is the way in which the tyrannical man is generated.

And is not this the reason why of old love has been called a tyrant ?

Yes, perhaps.

Further, I said, has not a drunken man also the spirit of a tyrant ?

True.

And you know that a man who is deranged and not right in his mind, will fancy that he is able to rule, not only over men, but also over the gods?

True.

And the tyrannical man comes into being just at that point when either under the influence of nature, or habit, or both, he becomes drunken, lustful, passionate?

Exactly.

Such is the man and such is his origin. And next, how does he live?

That, as people facetiously say, you may as well tell me. I imagine, I said, as the next step in his progress, that there will be feasts and carousals and revellings, and courtesans, and all that sort of thing; love is the lord of the house within him, who orders all the concerns of the soul.

That is certain.

Yes; and every day and every night desires grow up many and formidable, and their demands are many.

They are indeed, he said.

His revenues, if he has any, are soon spent.

True.

Then he borrows money, and his estate is taken from him. Of course.

When he has nothing left, must not his desires, crowding in the nest like young ravens, be crying aloud for food; he, goaded on by them, and especially by love himself on whom they dance attendance, is at his wits' end to discover whom he can defraud or despoil of his property, in order that he may gratify them?

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Yes, that is sure to be the case.

He must have money, and no matter how, if he is to escape horrid pangs and pains.

He must.

And as in himself there was a succession of pleasures, and the new got the better of the old and took away their rights, so he being younger will claim to have more than his father and his mother, and if he has spent his own property, he will take a slice out of theirs.

No doubt of that.

And if his parents will not suffer this, then he will try to cheat and deceive them.

Very true.

And if he cannot, then he will plunder and force them.
Yes, probably.

And if the old man and the old woman hold out against him, will he be very careful of doing anything which is tyrannical?

Nay, he said, I should not feel at all comfortable about his parents.

But, O heavens! Adeimantus, on account of some newfangled love of a harlot, who is anything but a necessary connection, can you believe that he would strike the mother who is his ancient friend and necessary to his very existence, and would place her under the authority of the other, when she is brought under the same roof with her; or that, under like circumstances, he would do the same to his withered old father, first and most indispensable of friends, for the sake of some blooming love of a youth who is the reverse of indispensable? Yes, indeed, he said; I believe that he would.

Truly, then, I said, a tyrannical son is a blessing to his father and mother.

Yes, indeed, he replied.

He first takes their property, and when that fails, and pleasures are beginning to swarm in the hive of his soul, then he

breaks into a house, or steals the garments of some nightly wayfarer, and the next thing is that he lifts a temple; and while all this is going on, the old opinions about good and evil which he had when a child, and which were thought by him to be right, are overthrown by those others which have just been emancipated, and are now the guard and associates of love, being those which in former days, when he was a partisan of democracy and subject to the laws and to his father, were only let loose in the dreams of sleep. But now that he is under the tyranny of love, he becomes always and in waking reality what he was then very rarely and in a dream only; he will commit the foulest murder, or eat forbidden food, or be guilty of any other horrid act. Love is his tyrant, and lives lordly in him, and being himself a king emancipated from all control, he leads him on-like man like State-into the performance of reckless deeds in order to maintain himself and his rabble, which evil communications have brought in from without, or which he himself has allowed to break loose within him by reason of a similar character in himself. Is not this a picture of his way of life?

Yes, indeed, he said.

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And if there are only a few of them, and the rest of the people are well disposed, they go away and become the bodyguard or mercenary soldiers of some other tyrant who may probably want them for a war; and if there is no war, they stay at home and do mischief in the city.

What sort of mischief?

For example, they are the thieves, burglars, cutpurses, footpads, robbers of temples, man-stealers of the community, and if they are able to speak they play the part of informers, and bear false witness, and take bribes.

And these, he replied, are not very small evils, even if the perpetrators of them are a few in number.

Yes, I said; but small and great are comparative terms, and all these things, in the misery and evil which they inflict upon a State, do not come within a thousand miles of the tyrant : the people are fools, and this class and their followers grow numerous and are aware of their numbers, and they take him who has most of the tyrant in his soul, and make him their leader.

Yes, he said, that is natural; for he will be the most tyrannically disposed.

If the people yield, well and good; but if they resist him, as he began by beating his own father and mother, so now, if he has the power, he beats his dear old fatherland and motherland, as the Cretans say, and brings in his young retainers to be their rulers and masters. And this is the end of his passions and desires.

Exactly.

Even in early days and before they get power, this is the way of them; they associate only with their own flatterers or ready tools; or, if they want anything from anybody, they themselves are equally ready to fall down before them; 576 there is no attitude into which they will not throw themselves, but when they have gained their point they know them

no more.

Yes, truly.

They are always either the masters or servants and never the friends of anybody; the tyrant never tastes of true freedom or true friendship.

Certainly not.

And may we not call such men treacherous ?

No question.

Also they are utterly unjust, if we were right in our notion of justice?

Yes, he said, and in that we were perfectly right.

Let us then sum up in a word, I said, the character of the worst man he is the waking reality of what we dreamed. Most true.

And this is he who being most of a tyrant by nature bears rule, and the longer he lives the more of a tyrant he becomes. That is certain, said Glaucon, taking his turn to answer. And will not he who has been shown to be the wickedest, be also the most miserable? and he most of all and longest of all who has tyrannized longest and most, and is most of a tyrant although this may not be the opinion of men in general? Yes, he said, that is inevitable.

And must not the tyrannical man be like the tyrannical State, and the democratical man like the democratical State; and the same of the others?

Certainly

And as State is to State in virtue and happiness, man is to man?