Section 558

And the freedom from all compulsion to hold office in such a city, even if you are qualified, 1 or again, to submit to rule, unless you please, or to make war when the rest are at war, 2 or to keep the peace when the others do so, unless you desire peace; and again, the liberty, in defiance of any law that forbids you, to hold office and sit on juries none the less, if it occurs to you to do so, is not all that a heavenly and delicious entertainment 3 for the time being? Perhaps, he said, for so long. And is not the placability 4 of some convicted criminals exquisite 5 ? Or have you never seen in such a state men condemned to death or exile who none the less stay on, and go to and fro among the people, and as if no one saw or heeded him, the man slips in and out 6 like a revenant 7 ? Yes, many, he said. And the tolerance of democracy, its superiority 8 to all our meticulous requirements, its disdain or our solemn 9 pronouncements 10 made when we were founding our city, that except in the case of transcendent 11 natural gifts no one could ever become a good man unless from childhood his play and all his pursuits were concerned with things fair and good,—how superbly 12 it tramples under foot all such ideals, caring nothing from what practices 13 and way of life a man turns to politics, but honoring him if only he says that he loves the people! 14 It is a noble 15 polity, indeed! he said. These and qualities akin to these democracy would exhibit, and it would, it seems, be a delightful 16 form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike! 17 Yes, he said, everybody knows that. Observe, then, the corresponding private character. Or must we first, as in the case of the polity, consider the origin of the type? Yes, he said. Is not this, then, the way of it? Our thrifty 18 oligarchical man would have a son bred in his father’s ways. Why not? And he, too, would control by force all his appetites for pleasure that are wasters and not winners of wealth, those which are denominated unnecessary. Obviously. And in order not to argue in the dark, shall we first define 19 our distinction between necessary and unnecessary appetites 20 ? Let us do so. Well, then, desires that we cannot divert or suppress may be properly called necessary, and likewise those whose satisfaction is beneficial to us, may they not? For our nature compels us to seek their satisfaction. Is not that so ? Most assuredly.