in the school of
necessity, into the freedom and libertinism of useless and unnecessary
pleasures.

Yes, he said, the change in him is visible enough.

After this he lives on, spending his money and labour and time on
unnecessary pleasures quite as much as on necessary ones; but if he be
fortunate, and is not too much disordered in his wits, when years have
elapsed, and the heyday of passion is over--supposing that he then
re-admits into the city some part of the exiled virtues, and does not
wholly give himself up to their successors--in that case he balances his
pleasures and lives in a sort of equilibrium, putting the government of
himself into the hands of the one which comes first and wins the turn;
and when he has had enough of that, then into the hands of another; he
despises none of them but encourages them all equally.

Very true, he said.

Neither does he receive or let pass into the fortress any true word of
advice; if any one says to him that some pleasures are the satisfactions
of good and noble desires, and others of evil desires, and that he ought
to use and honour some and chastise and master the others--whenever this
is repeated to him he shakes his head and says that they are all alike,
and that one is as good as another.

Yes, he said; that is the way with him.

Yes, I said, he lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the
hour; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute; then
he becomes a water-drinker, and tries to get thin; then he takes a turn
at gymnastics; sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then once
more living the life of a philosopher; often he is busy with politics,
and starts to his feet and says and does whatever comes into his head;
and, if he is emulous of any one who is a warrior, off he is in that
direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His life has
neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he terms joy and
bliss and freedom; and so he goes on.

Yes, he replied, he is all liberty and equality.

Yes, I said; his life is motley and manifold and an epitome of the
lives of many;--he answers to the State which we described as fair
and spangled. And many a man and many a woman will take him for their
pattern, and many a constitution and many an example of manners is
contained in him.

Just so.

Let him then be set over against democracy; he may truly be called the
democratic man.

Let that be his place, he said.

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