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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: third stage, or democracy, the various passions are allowed to have free
play, and the virtues and vices are impartially cultivated. But this
freedom, which leads to many curious extravagances of character, is in
reality only a state of weakness and dissipation. At last, one monster
passion takes possession of the whole nature of man--this is tyranny. In
all of them excess--the excess first of wealth and then of freedom, is the
element of decay.
The eighth book of the Republic abounds in pictures of life and fanciful
allusions; the use of metaphorical language is carried to a greater extent
than anywhere else in Plato. We may remark,
(1), the description of the two nations in one, which become more and more
The Republic |
