Republic

There remains for consideration, said I, the tyrannical man himself—the manner of his development out of the democratic type and his character and the quality of his life, whether wretched or happy. Why, yes, he still remains, he said. Do you know, then, what it is that I still miss? What? In the matter of our desires I do not think we sufficiently distinguished their nature and number. And so long as this is lacking our inquiry will lack clearness. Well, said he, will our consideration of them not still be opportune[*](For ἐν καλῷ cf. Soph. El. 348, Eurip. Heracleid. 971, Aristoph. Eccl. 321, Thesm. 292.)? By all means. And observe what it is about them that I wish to consider. It is this. Of our unnecessary pleasures[*](Cf. on 558 D.) and appetites there are some lawless ones, I think, which probably are to be found in us all, but which, when controlled[*](For κολαζόμεναι cf. on 559 B, p. 293, note c.) by the laws and the better desires in alliance with reason, can in some men be altogether got rid of, or so nearly so that only a few weak ones remain, while in others the remnant is stronger and more numerous. What desires do you mean? he said. Those, said I, that are awakened in sleep[*](Cf. Aristot. Eth. Nic. 102 b 5 ff. ὁ δ’ ἀγαθὸς καὶ κακὸς ἥκιστα διάδηλοι καθ’ ὕπνον, etc.; also his Problem. 957 a 21 ff. Cic. De divin. i. 29 translates this passage. Cf. further Herod. vi. 107, Soph. O.T. 981-982. Hazlitt writes We are not hypocrites in our sleep, a modern novelist, In sleep all barriers are down. The Freudians have at last discovered Plato’s anticipation of their main thesis. Cf. Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. p. 74: It has been perhaps Freud’s most remarkable thesis that dreams are manifestations of this emergence of desires and memories from the unconscious into the conscious field. The barriers of the Freudian unconscious are less tightly closed during sleep sententiously observes an eminent modern psychologist. Cf. Valentine, The New Psychology of the Unconscious, p. xiii. and ibid. p. 93: Freud refers to Plato’s view that the virtuous man does in actual life, but I believe he nowhere shows a knowledge of the following passage in the Republic. . . . Cf. ibid. p. 95: The germ of several aspects of the Freudian view of dreams, including the characteristic doctrine of the censor, was to be found in Plato. The Freudian view becomes at once distinctly more respectable. Many of the ancients, like some superstitious moderns, exalted the unconscious which reveals itself in dreams, and made it the source of prophecy. Cf. commentators on Aesch. Eumen. 104, Pindar, fr. 131 (96) Loeb, p. 589: εὕδει δὲ πρασσόντων μελέων, ἀτὰρ εὑδόντεσσιν ἐν πολλοῖς ὀνείροις | δείκνυσι τέρπνων ἐφέρποισαν χαλεπῶν τε κρίσιν, but it sleepeth while the limbs are active; yet to them that sleep, in many a dream it giveth presage of a decision of things delightful or doleful. (Sandys, Loeb tr.) Cf. Pausan. ix. 23, Cic. De div. i. 30, Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, pp. 105-107 (ed. J. A. Symonds). Plato did not share these superstitions. Cf. the irony of Tim. 71 D-E, and my review of Stewart’s Myths of Plato, Journal of Philos. Psychol. and Scientific Methods, vol. iii., 1906, pp. 495-498.) when the rest of the soul, the rational, gentle and dominant part, slumbers, but the beastly and savage part, replete with food and wine, gambols and, repelling sleep, endeavors to sally forth and satisfy its own instincts.[*](The Greeks had no good word for instinct, but there are passages in Plato where this translation is justified by the context for ἦθος, φύσις and such words.) You are aware that in such case there is nothing it will not venture to undertake as being released from all sense of shame and all reason. It does not shrink from attempting to lie with a mother in fancy or with anyone else, man, god or brute. It is ready for any foul deed of blood; it abstains from no food, and, in a word, falls short of no extreme of folly[*](For the idiom οὐδὲν ἐλλείπει cf. Soph. Trach. 90, Demosth. liv. 34. Cf. also 602 D and on 593 A, p. 200, note b.) and shamelessness. Most true, he said. But when, I suppose, a man’s condition is healthy and sober, and he goes to sleep after arousing his rational part and entertaining it with fair words and thoughts, and attaining to clear self-consciousness, while he has neither starved nor indulged to repletion his appetitive part, so that it may be lulled to sleep[*](Cf. Browning, Bishop Blougram’s Apology, And body gets its sop and holds its noise. Plato was no ascetic, as some have inferred from passages in the Republic, Laws, Gorgias and Phaedo. Cf. Herbert L. Stewart, Was Plato an Ascetic? Philos. Re., 1915, pp. 603-613; Dean Inge, Christian Ethics, p. 90: The asceticism of the true Platonist has always been sane moderate; the hallmark of Platonism is a combination of self-restraint and simplicity with humanism.) and not disturb the better part by its pleasure or pain, but may suffer that in isolated purity to examine and reach out towards and apprehend some of the things unknown to it, past, present or future;

and when he has in like manner tamed his passionate part, and does not after a quarrel fall asleep[*](Cf. Ephesians iv. 26 Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.) with anger still awake within him, but if he has thus quieted the two elements in his soul and quickened the third, in which reason resides, and so goes to his rest, you are aware that in such case[*](ἐν τῷ τοιούτῳ: cf. 382 B, 465 A, 470 C, 492 C, 590 A, Lysis 212 C, Laws 625 D.) he is most likely to apprehend truth, and the visions of his dreams are least likely to be lawless.[*](This sentence contains 129 words. George Moore says, Pater’s complaint that Plato’s sentences are long may be regarded as Pater’s single excursion into humor. But Pater is in fact justifying his own long sentences by Plato’s example. He calls this passage Plato’s evening prayer.)I certainly think so, he said. This description has carried us too far,[*](Plato always returns to the point after a digression. Cf. 543 C, 471 C, 544 B, 568 D, 588 B, Phaedo 78 B, Theaet. 177 C, Protag. 359 A, Crat. 438 A, Polit. 287 A-B, 263 C, 302 B, Laws 682 E, 697 C, 864 C, and many other passages. Cf. also Lysias ii. 61 ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἐξήχθην, Demosth. De cor. 211, Aristot. De an. 403 b 16, also p. 193, note i, and Plato’s carefulness in keeping to the point under discussion in 353 C, Theaet. 182 C, 206 C, Meno 93 A-B, Gorg. 479 D-E, 459 C-D, etc.) but the point that we have to notice is this, that in fact there exists in every one of us, even in some reputed most respectable,[*](For the irony of the expression Cf. Laws 693 D, Aesch. Eumen. 373.) a terrible, fierce and lawless brood of desires, which it seems are revealed in our sleep. Consider, then, whether there is anything in what I say, and whether you admit it. Well, I do. Now recall[*](Cf. 559 D f.) our characterization of the democratic man. His development was determined by his education from youth under a thrifty father who approved only the acquisitive appetites and disapproved the unnecessary ones whose object is entertainment and display. Is not that so? Yes. And by association with more sophisticated men, teeming with the appetites we have just described, he is impelled towards every form of insolence and outrage, and to the adoption of their way of life by his hatred of his father’s niggardliness. But since his nature is better than that of his corrupters, being drawn both ways he settles down in a compromise[*](εἰς μέσον: cf. p. 249, note f.) between the two tendencies, and indulging and enjoying each in moderation, forsooth,[*](Ironical. δή. See p. 300, note a. Cf. modern satire on moderate drinking and moderate preparedness.) as he supposes,[*](ὡς ᾤετο is another ironical formula like ἵνα δή, ὡς ἄρα, etc.) he lives what he deems a life that is neither illiberal nor lawless, now transformed from an oligarch to a democrat. That was and is our belief about this type. Assume,[*](θές: Cf. Theaet. 191 C, Phileb. 33 D.) then, again, said I, that such a man when he is older has a son bred in turn[*](This is the αὖ of the succession of the generations. Cf. p. 247, note f.) in his ways of life. I so assume. And suppose the experience of his father to be repeated in his case. He is drawn toward utter lawlessness, which is called by his seducers complete freedom. His father and his other kin lend support to[*](Cf. 559 E.) these compromise appetites while the others lend theirs to the opposite group.