The characteristic of the democracy is equal freedom and open speech to all, with liberty to each man to shape his own life as he chooses. Hence there arises a great diversity of individual taste and character. Uniformity of pursuit or conduct is scarcely enforced: there is little restraint upon any one. A man offers himself for office whenever he chooses and not unless he chooses. He is at war or at peace, not by obedience to any public authority, but according to his own individual preference. If he be even condemned by a court of justice, he remains in the city careless of the sentence, which is never enforced against him. This democracy is an equal, agreeable, diversified, society, with little or no government: equal in regard to all--to the good, bad, and indifferent.[269] [Footnote 269: Plato, Republic, viii. pp. 557-558.] So too the democratical individual. The son of one among these frugal and money-getting oligarchs, departing from the habits and disregarding the advice of his father, contracts a taste for expensive and varied indulgences. He loses sight of the distinction between what is necessary, and what is not necessary, in respect to desires and pleasures. If he be of a quiet temperament, not quite out of the reach of advice, he keeps clear of ruinous excess in any one direction; but he gives himself up to a great diversity of successive occupations and amusements, passing from one to the other without discrimination of good from bad, necessary from unnecessary.[270] His life and character thus becomes an agreeable, unconstrained, changeful, comprehensive, miscellany, like the society to which he belongs.[271] [Footnote 270: Plato, Republic, viii. pp. 560-561 B. [Greek: ei)s i)/son dê/ ti katastê/sas ta\s ê(dona\s dia/gei, tê=| parapiptou/sê| a)ei\ ô(/sper lachou/sê| tê\n e(autou= a)rchê\n paradidou/s, e(/ôs a)\n plêrôthê=|, kai\ au)=this a)/llê|, ou)demi/an a)tima/zôn, a)ll' e)x i)/sou tre/phôn.]] [Footnote 271: Plato, Republic, viii. pp. 561 D-E. [Greek: pantodapo/n te kai\ plei/stôn ê(thô=n mesto/n, kai\ to\n kalo/n te kai\ poiki/lon, ô(/sper e)kei/nên tê\n po/lin, tou=ton to\n a)/ndra ei)=nai.]] [Side-note: 4. Passage from democracy to despotism. Character of the despotic city.] Democracy, like oligarchy, becomes ultimately subverted by an abuse of its own characteristic principle. Freedom is gradually pushed into extravagance and excess, while all other considerations are neglected. No obedience is practised: no authority is recognised. The son feels himself equal to his father, the disciple to his teacher, the metic to the citizen, the wife to her husband, the slave to his master. Nay, even horses, asses, and dogs, go free about, so that they run against you in the road, if you do not make way for them.[272] The laws are not obeyed: every man is his own master. [Footnote 272: Plato, Republic, viii. pp. 562-563 C.]