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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: only four of any note in Hellas:--first, the famous Lacedaemonian or Cretan
commonwealth; secondly, oligarchy, a State full of evils; thirdly,
democracy, which follows next in order; fourthly, tyranny, which is the
disease or death of all government. Now, States are not made of 'oak and
rock,' but of flesh and blood; and therefore as there are five States there
must be five human natures in individuals, which correspond to them. And
first, there is the ambitious nature, which answers to the Lacedaemonian
State; secondly, the oligarchical nature; thirdly, the democratical; and
fourthly, the tyrannical. This last will have to be compared with the
perfectly just, which is the fifth, that we may know which is the happier,
and then we shall be able to determine whether the argument of Thrasymachus
The Republic |
