[561]
And is it not in some such way as this, said I,
that in his youth the transformation takes place from the restriction to necessary desires in his education to the liberation and release of his unnecessary and harmful desires?
Yes, your description is most vivid, said he.
Then, in his subsequent life, I take it, such a one expends money and toil and time no more on his necessary than on his unnecessary pleasures. But if it is his good fortune that the period of storm and stress does not last too long, and as he grows older
561b
the fiercest tumult within him passes, and he receives back a part of the banished elements and does not abandon himself altogether to the invasion of the others, then he establishes and maintains all his pleasures on a footing of equality, forsooth,
1
and so lives turning over the guard-house
2
of his soul to each as it happens along until it is sated, as if it had drawn the lot for that office, and then in turn to another, disdaining none but fostering them all equally.
3
Quite so.
And he does not accept or admit into the guard-house the words of truth when anyone tells him
561c
that some pleasures arise from honorable and good desires, and others from those that are base,
4
and that we ought to practise and esteem the one and control and subdue the others; but he shakes his head
5
at all such admonitions and avers that they are all alike and to be equally esteemed.
Such is indeed his state of mind and his conduct.
And does he not, said I,
also live out his life in this fashion, day by day indulging the appetite of the day, now wine-bibbing and abandoning himself to the lascivious pleasing of the flute
6
and again drinking only water and dieting;
561d
and at one time exercising his body, and sometimes idling and neglecting all things, and at another time seeming to occupy himself with philosophy. And frequently he goes in for politics and bounces up
7
and says and does whatever enters his head.
8
And if military men excite his emulation, thither he rushes, and if moneyed men, to that he turns, and there is no order or compulsion in his existence, but he calls this life of his the life of pleasure and freedom and happiness and
561e
cleaves to it to the end.
That is a perfect description, he said,
of a devotee of equality.
I certainly think, said I,
that he is a manifold
9
man stuffed with most excellent differences, and that like that city
10
he is the fair and many-colored one whom many a man and woman would count fortunate in his life, as containing within himself the greatest number of patterns of constitutions and qualities.
Yes, that is so, he said.
Republic. Plato. Paul Shorey (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1935-37.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.