to death or exile, you will probably meet him the next day, come to life again, and parading the streets like a hero. There is something splendid, concludes Socrates comically, in the forbearance of such a commonwealth, and in its entire superiority to all petty considerations.
Again, the democrat is like the democracy. Brought up in a miserly and ignorant way by his father, the oligarch, the young man is soon corrupted by bad company, and a swarm of passions and wild and presumptuous theories seize the citadel of his reason, whence temperance and modesty are expelled. Even if not thoroughly reprobate, he is at the mercy of each fleeting caprice, and gives way to the humour of the hour, now revelling with wine and music, now fasting on bread and water—now an idler, and now a student; by turns politician, general, or trader.[1]
In a thoroughgoing democracy we have liberty and equality everywhere—in fact, there is soon a universal anarchy. Respect for rank and age soon dies out. Father and son, teacher and scholar, master and servant, are all on the same dead level. The very animals (says the speaker, with an amusing touch of satire) become gorged with freedom, and will run at you if you get in their way.
- ↑ Professor Jowett quotes Dryden's well-known description of the Duke of Buckingham—He thinks that Alcibiades is referred to; but the lines would apply equally well to Critias, Plato's uncle (Curtius, Hist. Greece, iii. 542)
