Thus much of the origin,—let us next consider the evils of oligarchy.
Would a man who wanted to be safe on a voyage take a bad pilot because
he was rich, or refuse a good one because he was poor? And does not the
analogy apply still more to the State? And there are yet greater evils:
two nations are struggling together in one—the rich and the poor; and
the rich dare not put arms into the hands of the poor, and are
unwilling to pay for defenders out of their own money. And have we not
already condemned that State in which the same persons are warriors as
well as shopkeepers? The greatest evil of all is that a man may sell
his property and have no place in the State; while there is one class
which has enormous wealth, the other is entirely destitute. But observe
that these destitutes had not really any more of the governing nature
in them when they were rich than now that they are poor; they were
miserable spendthrifts always. They are the drones of the hive; only
whereas the actual drone is unprovided by nature with a sting, the
two-legged things whom we call drones are some of them without stings
and some of them have dreadful stings; in other words, there are
paupers and there are rogues. These are never far apart; and in
oligarchical cities, where nearly everybody is a pauper who is not a
ruler, you will find abundance of both. And this evil state of society
originates in bad education and bad government.
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 man is mean, saving, toiling, 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. 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