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BOOK IX.
Last of all comes the tyrannical man, about whom we have to enquire,
Whence is he, and how does he live--in happiness or in misery? There is, however, a previous question of the nature and number of the
appetites, which I should like to consider first. Some of them are
unlawful, and yet admit of being chastened and weakened in various degrees
by the power of reason and law. 'What appetites do you mean?' I mean
those which are awake when the reasoning powers are asleep, which get up
and walk about naked without any self-respect or shame; and there is no
conceivable folly or crime, however cruel or unnatural, of which, in
imagination, they may not be guilty. 'True,' he said; 'very true.' But
when a man's pulse beats temperately; and he has supped on a feast of
reason and come to a knowledge of himself before going to rest, and has
satisfied his desires just enough to prevent their perturbing his reason,
which remains clear and luminous, and when he is free from quarrel and
heat,--the visions which he has on his bed are least irregular and
abnormal. Even in good men there is such an irregular wild-beast nature,
which peers out in sleep.
To return:--You remember what was said of the democrat; that he was the son
of a miserly father, who encouraged the saving desires and repressed the
ornamental and expensive ones; presently the youth got into fine company,
and began to entertain a dislike to his father's narrow ways; and being a
better man than the corrupters of his youth, he came to a mean, and led a
life, not of lawless or slavish passion, but of regular and successive
indulgence. Now imagine that the youth has become a father, and has a son
who is exposed to the same temptations, and has companions who lead him
into every sort of iniquity, and parents and friends who try to keep him
right. The counsellors of evil find that their only chance of retaining
him is to implant in his soul a monster drone, or love; while other desires
buzz around him and mystify him with sweet sounds and scents, this monster
love takes possession of him, and puts an end to every true or modest
thought or wish. Love, like drunkenness and madness, is a tyranny; and the
tyrannical man, whether made by nature or habit, is just a drinking,
lusting, furious sort of animal.
And how does such an one live? 'Nay, that you must tell me.' Well then, I
fancy that he will live amid revelries and harlotries, and love will be the
lord and master of the house. Many desires require much money, and so he
spends all that he has and borrows more; and when he has nothing the young
ravens are still in the nest in which they were hatched, crying for food.
Love urges them on; and they must be gratified by force or fraud, or if
not, they become painful and troublesome; and as the new pleasures succeed
the old ones, so will the son take possession of the goods of his parents;
if they show signs of refusing, he will defraud and deceive them; and if
they openly resist, what then? 'I can only say, that I should not much
like to be in their place.' But, O heavens, Adeimantus, to think that for
some new-fangled and unnecessary love he will give up his old father and
mother, best and dearest of friends, or enslave them to the fancies of the
hour! Truly a tyrannical son is a blessing to his father and mother! When
there is no more to be got out of them, he turns burglar or pickpocket, or
robs a temple. Love overmasters the thoughts of his youth, and he becomes
in sober reality the monster that he was sometimes in sleep. He waxes
strong in all violence and lawlessness; and is ready for any deed of daring
that will supply the wants of his rabble-rout. In a well-ordered State
there are only a few such, and these in time of war go out and become the
mercenaries of a tyrant. But in time of peace they stay at home and do
mischief; they are the thieves, footpads, cut-purses, man-stealers of the
community; or if they are able to speak, they turn false-witnesses and
informers. 'No small catalogue of crimes truly, even if the perpetrators
are few.' Yes, I said; but small and great are relative terms, and no
crimes which are committed by them approach those of the tyrant, whom this
class, growing strong and numerous, create out of themselves. If the
people yield, well and good, but, if they resist, then, as before he beat
his father and mother, so now he beats his fatherland and motherland, and
places his mercenaries over them. Such men in their early days live with
flatterers, and they themselves flatter others, in order to gain their
ends; but they soon discard their followers when they have no longer any
need of them; they are always either masters or servants,--the joys of
friendship are unknown to them. And they are utterly treacherous and
unjust, if the nature of justice be at all understood by us. They realize
our dream; and he who is the most of a tyrant by nature, and leads the life
of a tyrant for the longest time, will be the worst of them, and being the
worst of them, will also be the most miserable.
Like man, like State,--the tyrannical man will answer to tyranny, which is
the extreme opposite of the royal State; for one is the best and the other
the worst. But which is the happier? Great and terrible as the tyrant may
appear enthroned amid his satellites, let us not be afraid to go in and
ask; and the answer is, that the monarchical is the happiest, and the
tyrannical the most miserable of States. And may we not ask the same
question about the men themselves, requesting some one to look into them
who is able to penetrate the inner nature of man, and will not be panic-
struck by the vain pomp of tyranny? I will suppose that he is one who has
lived with him, and has seen him in family life, or perhaps in the hour of
trouble and danger.
Assuming that we ourselves are the impartial judge for whom we seek, let us
begin by comparing the individual and State, and ask first of all, whether
the State is likely to be free or enslaved--Will there not be a little
freedom and a great deal of slavery? And the freedom is of the bad, and
the slavery of the good; and this applies to the man as well as to the
State; for his soul is full of meanness and slavery, and the better part is
enslaved to the worse. He cannot do what he would, and his mind is full of
confusion; he is the very reverse of a freeman. The State will be poor and
full of misery and sorrow; and the man's soul will also be poor and full of
sorrows, and he will be the most miserable of men. No, not the most
miserable, for there is yet a more miserable. 'Who is that?' The
tyrannical man who has the misfortune also to become a public tyrant.
'There I suspect that you are right.' Say rather, 'I am sure;' conjecture
is out of place in an enquiry of this nature. He is like a wealthy owner
of slaves, only he has more of them than any private individual. You will
say, 'The owners of slaves are not generally in any fear of them.' But
why? Because the whole city is in a league which protects the individual.
Suppose however that one of these owners and his household is carried off
by a god into a wilderness, where there are no freemen to help him--will he
not be in an agony of terror?--will he not be compelled to flatter his
slaves and to promise them many things sore against his will? And suppose
the same god who carried him off were to surround him with neighbours who
declare that no man ought to have slaves, and that the owners of them
should be punished with death. 'Still worse and worse! He will be in the
midst of his enemies.' And is not our tyrant such a captive soul, who is
tormented by a swarm of passions which he cannot indulge; living indoors
always like a woman, and jealous of those who can go out and see the world?
Having so many evils, will not the most miserable of men be still more
miserable in a public station? Master of others when he is not master of
himself; like a sick man who is compelled to be an athlete; the meanest of
slaves and the most abject of flatterers; wanting all things, and never
able to satisfy his desires; always in fear and distraction, like the State
of which he is the representative. His jealous, hateful, faithless temper
grows worse with command; he is more and more faithless, envious,
unrighteous,--the most wretched of men, a misery to himself and to others.
And so let us have a final trial and proclamation; need we hire a herald,
or shall I proclaim the result? 'Made the proclamation yourself.' The son
of Ariston (the best) is of opinion that the best and justest of men is
also the happiest, and that this is he who is the most royal master of
himself; and that the unjust man is he who is the greatest tyrant of
himself and of his State. And I add further--'seen or unseen by gods or
men.'
This is our first proof. The second is derived from the three kinds of
pleasure, which answer to the three elements of the soul--reason, passion,
desire; under which last is comprehended avarice as well as sensual
appetite, while passion includes ambition, party-feeling, love of
reputation. Reason, again, is solely directed to the attainment of truth,
and careless of money and reputation. In accordance with the difference of
men's natures, one of these three principles is in the ascendant, and they
have their several pleasures corresponding to them. Interrogate now the
three natures, and each one will be found praising his own pleasures and
depreciating those of others. The money-maker will contrast the vanity of
knowledge with the solid advantages of wealth. The ambitious man will
despise knowledge which brings no honour; whereas the philosopher will
regard only the fruition of truth, and will call other pleasures necessary
rather than good. Now, how shall we decide between them? Is there any
better criterion than experience and knowledge? And which of the three has
the truest knowledge and the widest experience? The experience of youth
makes the philosopher acquainted with the two kinds of desire, but the
avaricious and the ambitious man never taste the pleasures of truth and
wisdom. Honour he has equally with them; they are 'judged of him,' but he
is 'not judged of them,' for they never attain to the knowledge of true
being. And his instrument is reason, whereas their standard is only wealth
and honour; and if by reason we are to judge, his good will be the truest.
And so we arrive at the result that the pleasure of the rational part of
the soul, and a life passed in such pleasure is the pleasantest. He who
has a right to judge judges thus. Next comes the life of ambition, and, in
the third place, that of money-making.
Twice has the just man overthrown the unjust--once more, as in an Olympian
contest, first offering up a prayer to the saviour Zeus, let him try a
fall. A wise man whispers to me that the pleasures of the wise are true
and pure; all others are a shadow only. Let us examine this: Is not
pleasure opposed to pain, and is there not a mean state which is neither?
When a man is sick, nothing is more pleasant to him than health. But this
he never found out while he was well. In pain he desires only to cease
from pain; on the other hand, when he is in an ecstasy of pleasure, rest is
painful to him. Thus rest or cessation is both pleasure and pain. But can
that which is neither become both? Again, pleasure and pain are motions,
and the absence of them is rest; but if so, how can the absence of either
of them be the other? Thus we are led to infer that the contradiction is
an appearance only, and witchery of the senses. And these are not the only
pleasures, for there are others which have no preceding pains. Pure
pleasure then is not the absence of pain, nor pure pain the absence of
pleasure; although most of the pleasures which reach the mind through the
body are reliefs of pain, and have not only their reactions when they
depart, but their anticipations before they come. They can be best
described in a simile. There is in nature an upper, lower, and middle
region, and he who passes from the lower to the middle imagines that he is
going up and is already in the upper world; and if he were taken back again
would think, and truly think, that he was descending. All this arises out
of his ignorance of the true upper, middle, and lower regions. And a like
confusion happens with pleasure and pain, and with many other things. The
man who compares grey with black, calls grey white; and the man who
compares absence of pain with pain, calls the absence of pain pleasure.
Again, hunger and thirst are inanitions of the body, ignorance and folly of
the soul; and food is the satisfaction of the one, knowledge of the other.
Now which is the purer satisfaction--that of eating and drinking, or that
of knowledge? Consider the matter thus: The satisfaction of that which
has more existence is truer than of that which has less. The invariable
and immortal has a more real existence than the variable and mortal, and
has a corresponding measure of knowledge and truth. The soul, again, has
more existence and truth and knowledge than the body, and is therefore more
really satisfied and has a more natural pleasure. Those who feast only on
earthly food, are always going at random up to the middle and down again;
but they never pass into the true upper world, or have a taste of true
pleasure. They are like fatted beasts, full of gluttony and sensuality,
and ready to kill one another by reason of their insatiable lust; for they
are not filled with true being, and their vessel is leaky (Gorgias). Their
pleasures are mere shadows of pleasure, mixed with pain, coloured and
intensified by contrast, and therefore intensely desired; and men go
fighting about them, as Stesichorus says that the Greeks fought about the
shadow of Helen at Troy, because they know not the truth.
The same may be said of the passionate element:--the desires of the
ambitious soul, as well as of the covetous, have an inferior satisfaction.
Only when under the guidance of reason do either of the other principles do
their own business or attain the pleasure which is natural to them. When
not attaining, they compel the other parts of the soul to pursue a shadow
of pleasure which is not theirs. And the more distant they are from
philosophy and reason, the more distant they will be from law and order,
and the more illusive will be their pleasures. The desires of love and
tyranny are the farthest from law, and those of the king are nearest to it.
There is one genuine pleasure, and two spurious ones: the tyrant goes
beyond even the latter; he has run away altogether from law and reason.
Nor can the measure of his inferiority be told, except in a figure. The
tyrant is the third removed from the oligarch, and has therefore, not a
shadow of his pleasure, but the shadow of a shadow only. The oligarch,
again, is thrice removed from the king, and thus we get the formula 3 x 3,
which is the number of a surface, representing the shadow which is the
tyrant's pleasure, and if you like to cube this 'number of the beast,' you
will find that the measure of the difference amounts to 729; the king is
729 times more happy than the tyrant. And this extraordinary number is
NEARLY equal to the number of days and nights in a year (365 x 2 = 730);
and is therefore concerned with human life. This is the interval between a
good and bad man in happiness only: what must be the difference between
them in comeliness of life and virtue!
Perhaps you may remember some one saying at the beginning of our discussion
that the unjust man was profited if he had the reputation of justice. Now
that we know the nature of justice and injustice, let us make an image of
the soul, which will personify his words. First of all, fashion a
multitudinous beast, having a ring of heads of all manner of animals, tame
and wild, and able to produce and change them at pleasure. Suppose now
another form of a lion, and another of a man; the second smaller than the
first, the third than the second; join them together and cover them with a
human skin, in which they are completely concealed. When this has been
done, let us tell the supporter of injustice that he is feeding up the
beasts and starving the man. The maintainer of justice, on the other hand,
is trying to strengthen the man; he is nourishing the gentle principle
within him, and making an alliance with the lion heart, in order that he
may be able to keep down the many-headed hydra, and bring all into unity
with each other and with themselves. Thus in every point of view, whether
in relation to pleasure, honour, or advantage, the just man is right, and
the unjust wrong.
But now, let us reason with the unjust, who is not intentionally in error.
Is not the noble that which subjects the beast to the man, or rather to the
God in man; the ignoble, that which subjects the man to the beast? And if
so, who would receive gold on condition that he was to degrade the noblest
part of himself under the worst?--who would sell his son or daughter into
the hands of brutal and evil men, for any amount of money? And will he
sell his own fairer and diviner part without any compunction to the most
godless and foul? Would he not be worse than Eriphyle, who sold her
husband's life for a necklace? And intemperance is the letting loose of
the multiform monster, and pride and sullenness are the growth and increase
of the lion and serpent element, while luxury and effeminacy are caused by
a too great relaxation of spirit. Flattery and meanness again arise when
the spirited element is subjected to avarice, and the lion is habituated to
become a monkey. The real disgrace of handicraft arts is, that those who
are engaged in them have to flatter, instead of mastering their desires;
therefore we say that they should be placed under the control of the better
principle in another because they have none in themselves; not, as
Thrasymachus imagined, to the injury of the subjects, but for their good.
And our intention in educating the young, is to give them self-control; the
law desires to nurse up in them a higher principle, and when they have
acquired this, they may go their ways.
'What, then, shall a man profit, if he gain the whole world' and become
more and more wicked? Or what shall he profit by escaping discovery, if
the concealment of evil prevents the cure? If he had been punished, the
brute within him would have been silenced, and the gentler element
liberated; and he would have united temperance, justice, and wisdom in his
soul--a union better far than any combination of bodily gifts. The man of
understanding will honour knowledge above all; in the next place he will
keep under his body, not only for the sake of health and strength, but in
order to attain the most perfect harmony of body and soul. In the
acquisition of riches, too, he will aim at order and harmony; he will not
desire to heap up wealth without measure, but he will fear that the
increase of wealth will disturb the constitution of his own soul. For the
same reason he will only accept such honours as will make him a better man;
any others he will decline. 'In that case,' said he, 'he will never be a
politician.' Yes, but he will, in his own city; though probably not in his
native country, unless by some divine accident. 'You mean that he will be
a citizen of the ideal city, which has no place upon earth.' But in
heaven, I replied, there is a pattern of such a city, and he who wishes may
order his life after that image. Whether such a state is or ever will be
matters not; he will act according to that pattern and no other...
The most noticeable points in the 9th Book of the Republic are:--(1) the
account of pleasure; (2) the number of the interval which divides the king
from the tyrant; (3) the pattern which is in heaven.
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Plato's account of pleasure is remarkable for moderation, and in this
respect contrasts with the later Platonists and the views which are
attributed to them by Aristotle. He is not, like the Cynics, opposed to
all pleasure, but rather desires that the several parts of the soul shall
have their natural satisfaction; he even agrees with the Epicureans in
describing pleasure as something more than the absence of pain. This is
proved by the circumstance that there are pleasures which have no
antecedent pains (as he also remarks in the Philebus), such as the
pleasures of smell, and also the pleasures of hope and anticipation. In
the previous book he had made the distinction between necessary and
unnecessary pleasure, which is repeated by Aristotle, and he now observes
that there are a further class of 'wild beast' pleasures, corresponding to
Aristotle's (Greek). He dwells upon the relative and unreal character of
sensual pleasures and the illusion which arises out of the contrast of
pleasure and pain, pointing out the superiority of the pleasures of reason,
which are at rest, over the fleeting pleasures of sense and emotion. The
pre-eminence of royal pleasure is shown by the fact that reason is able to
form a judgment of the lower pleasures, while the two lower parts of the
soul are incapable of judging the pleasures of reason. Thus, in his
treatment of pleasure, as in many other subjects, the philosophy of Plato
is 'sawn up into quantities' by Aristotle; the analysis which was
originally made by him became in the next generation the foundation of
further technical distinctions. Both in Plato and Aristotle we note the
illusion under which the ancients fell of regarding the transience of
pleasure as a proof of its unreality, and of confounding the permanence of
the intellectual pleasures with the unchangeableness of the knowledge from
which they are derived. Neither do we like to admit that the pleasures of
knowledge, though more elevating, are not more lasting than other
pleasures, and are almost equally dependent on the accidents of our bodily
state (Introduction to Philebus).
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The number of the interval which separates the king from the tyrant,
and royal from tyrannical pleasures, is 729, the cube of 9. Which Plato
characteristically designates as a number concerned with human life,
because NEARLY equivalent to the number of days and nights in the year. He
is desirous of proclaiming that the interval between them is immeasurable,
and invents a formula to give expression to his idea. Those who spoke of
justice as a cube, of virtue as an art of measuring (Prot.), saw no
inappropriateness in conceiving the soul under the figure of a line, or the
pleasure of the tyrant as separated from the pleasure of the king by the
numerical interval of 729. And in modern times we sometimes use
metaphorically what Plato employed as a philosophical formula. 'It is not
easy to estimate the loss of the tyrant, except perhaps in this way,' says
Plato. So we might say, that although the life of a good man is not to be
compared to that of a bad man, yet you may measure the difference between
them by valuing one minute of the one at an hour of the other ('One day in
thy courts is better than a thousand'), or you might say that 'there is an
infinite difference.' But this is not so much as saying, in homely phrase,
'They are a thousand miles asunder.' And accordingly Plato finds the
natural vehicle of his thoughts in a progression of numbers; this
arithmetical formula he draws out with the utmost seriousness, and both
here and in the number of generation seems to find an additional proof of
the truth of his speculation in forming the number into a geometrical
figure; just as persons in our own day are apt to fancy that a statement is
verified when it has been only thrown into an abstract form. In speaking
of the number 729 as proper to human life, he probably intended to intimate
that one year of the tyrannical = 12 hours of the royal life.
The simple observation that the comparison of two similar solids is
effected by the comparison of the cubes of their sides, is the mathematical
groundwork of this fanciful expression. There is some difficulty in
explaining the steps by which the number 729 is obtained; the oligarch is
removed in the third degree from the royal and aristocratical, and the
tyrant in the third degree from the oligarchical; but we have to arrange
the terms as the sides of a square and to count the oligarch twice over,
thus reckoning them not as = 5 but as = 9. The square of 9 is passed
lightly over as only a step towards the cube.
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Towards the close of the Republic, Plato seems to be more and more
convinced of the ideal character of his own speculations. At the end of
the 9th Book the pattern which is in heaven takes the place of the city of
philosophers on earth. The vision which has received form and substance at
his hands, is now discovered to be at a distance. And yet this distant
kingdom is also the rule of man's life. ('Say not lo! here, or lo! there,
for the kingdom of God is within you.') Thus a note is struck which
prepares for the revelation of a future life in the following Book. But
the future life is present still; the ideal of politics is to be realized
in the individual.
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