Pagina 363 di 1391

This ideal of wickedness living in helpless misery, is the

reverse of that other portrait of perfect injustice ruling in

happiness and splendour, which first of all Thrasymachus, and

afterwards the sons of Ariston had drawn, and is also the reverse

of the king whose rule of life is the good of his subjects.

Each of these governments and individuals has a corresponding

ethical gradation: the ideal State is under the rule of reason,

not extinguishing but harmonizing the passions, and training them

in virtue; in the timocracy and the timocratic man the

constitution, whether of the State or of the individual, is

based, first, upon courage, and secondly, upon the love of

honour; this latter virtue, which is hardly to be esteemed a

virtue, has superseded all the rest. In the second stage of

decline the virtues have altogether disappeared, and the love of

gain has succeeded to them; in the third stage, or democracy, the

various passions are allowed to have free play, and the virtues

and vices are impartially cultivated. But this freedom, which

leads to many curious extravagances of character, is in reality

only a state of weakness and dissipation. At last, one monster

passion takes possession of the whole nature of man-this is

tyranny.