Justice -- Early works to 1800; Political science -- Early works to 1800; Utopias -- Early works to 1800
*553* Like State, like man,--the change in the latter begins with the
representative of timocracy; he walks at first in the ways of his father,
who may have been a statesman, or general, perhaps; and presently he sees
him 'fallen from his high estate,' the victim of informers, dying in
prison or exile, or by the hand of the executioner. The lesson which he
thus receives, makes him cautious; he leaves politics, represses his
pride, and saves pence. Avarice is enthroned as his bosom's lord, and
assumes the style of the Great King; the rational and spirited elements
sit humbly on the ground at either side, the one immersed in calculation,
the other absorbed in the admiration of wealth. The love of honour turns
to love of money; the conversion is instantaneous. The {cxx} man is mean,
saving, toiling, *554* the slave of one passion which is the master of the
rest: Is he not the very image of the State? He has had no education, or
he would never have allowed the blind god of riches to lead the dance
within him. And being uneducated he will have many slavish desires, some
beggarly, some knavish, breeding in his soul. If he is the trustee of an
orphan, and has the power to defraud, he will soon prove that he is not
without the will, and that his passions are only restrained by fear and
not by reason. Hence he leads a divided existence; in which the better
desires mostly prevail. *555* But when he is contending for prizes and
other distinctions, he is afraid to incur a loss which is to be repaid
only by barren honour; in time of war he fights with a small part of his
resources, and usually keeps his money and loses the victory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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