Classical literature; Political science -- Early works to 1800
placed himself at the helm and restored order, and made the world
immortal and imperishable. Once more the cycle of life and generation
was reversed; the infants grew into young men, and the young men became
greyheaded; no longer did the animals spring out of the earth; as the
whole world was now lord of its own progress, so the parts were to
be self-created and self-nourished. At first the case of men was very
helpless and pitiable; for they were alone among the wild beasts, and
had to carry on the struggle for existence without arts or knowledge,
and had no food, and did not know how to get any. That was the time when
Prometheus brought them fire, Hephaestus and Athene taught them arts,
and other gods gave them seeds and plants. Out of these human life was
framed; for mankind were left to themselves, and ordered their own ways,
living, like the universe, in one cycle after one manner, and in another
cycle after another manner.
Enough of the myth, which may show us two errors of which we were guilty
in our account of the king. The first and grand error was in choosing
for our king a god, who belongs to the other cycle, instead of a man
from our own; there was a lesser error also in our failure to define
the nature of the royal functions. The myth gave us only the image of
a divine shepherd, whereas the statesmen and kings of our own day very
much resemble their subjects in education and breeding. On retracing our
steps we find that we gave too narrow a designation to the art which was
concerned with command-for-self over living creatures, when we called it
the 'feeding' of animals in flocks. This would apply to all shepherds,
with the exception of the Statesman; but if we say 'managing' or
'tending' animals, the term would include him as well. Having remodelled
the name, we may subdivide as before, first separating the human from
the divine shepherd or manager. Then we may subdivide the human art of
governing into the government of willing and unwilling subjects--royalty
and tyranny--which are the extreme opposites of one another, although we
in our simplicity have hitherto confounded them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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