Dialogues of Plato - MobileReference [916]
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.
STRANGER: And this we believe to be the origin of the tyrant and the king, of oligarchies, and aristocracies, and democracies,--because men are offended at the one monarch, and can never be made to believe that any one can be worthy of such authority, or is able and willing in the spirit of virtue and knowledge to act justly and holily to all; they fancy that he will be a despot who will wrong and harm and slay whom he pleases of us; for if there could be such a despot as we describe, they would acknowledge that we ought to be too glad to have him, and that he alone would be the happy ruler of a true and perfect State.
YOUNG SOCRATES: To be sure.
STRANGER: But then, as the State is not like a beehive, and has no natural head who is at once recognized to be the superior both in body and in mind, mankind are obliged to meet and make laws, and endeavour to approach as nearly as they can to the true form of government.
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
STRANGER: And when the foundation of politics is in the letter only and in custom, and knowledge is divorced from action, can we wonder, Socrates, at the miseries which there are, and always will be, in States? Any other art, built on such a foundation and thus conducted, would ruin all that it touched. Ought we not rather to wonder at the natural strength of the political bond? For States have endured all this, time out of mind, and yet some of them still remain and are not overthrown, though many of them, like ships at sea, founder from time to time, and perish and have perished and will hereafter perish, through the badness of their pilots and crews, who have the worst sort of ignorance of the highest truths--I mean to say, that they are wholly unaquainted with politics, of which, above all other sciences, they believe themselves to have acquired the most perfect knowledge.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.
STRANGER: Then the question arises:--which of these untrue forms of government is the least oppressive to their subjects, though they are all oppressive; and which is the worst of them? Here is a consideration which is beside our present purpose, and yet having regard to the whole it seems to influence all our actions: we must examine it.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, we must.
STRANGER: You may say that of the three forms, the same is at once the hardest and the easiest.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?
STRANGER: I am speaking of the three forms of government, which I mentioned at the beginning of this discussion--monarchy, the rule of the few, and the rule of the many.
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
STRANGER: If we divide each of these we shall have six, from which the true one may be distinguished as a seventh.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How would you make the division?
STRANGER: Monarchy divides into royalty and tyranny; the rule of the few into aristocracy, which has an auspicious name, and oligarchy; and democracy or the rule of the many, which before was one, must now be divided.
YOUNG SOCRATES: On what principle of division?
STRANGER: On the same principle as before, although the name is now discovered to have a twofold meaning. For the distinction of ruling with law or without law, applies to this as well as to the rest.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
STRANGER: The division made no difference when we were looking for the perfect State, as we showed before. But now that this has been separated off, and, as we said, the others alone are left for us, the principle of law and the absence of law will bisect them all.
YOUNG SOCRATES: That would seem to follow, from what has been said.
STRANGER: Then monarchy, when bound by good prescriptions or laws, is the best of all the six, and when lawless is the most bitter and oppressive to the subject.
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
STRANGER: The government of the few, which is intermediate between that of the one and many, is also intermediate in good and evil; but the government of the many is