ude of pure abstraction, free to contemplate and aspire to
the knowledge of the unknown, whether in past, present, or future: when
again he has allayed the passionate element, if he has a quarrel against
any one--I say, when, after pacifying the two irrational principles, he
rouses up the third, which is reason, before he takes his rest, then,
as you know, he attains truth most nearly, and is least likely to be the
sport of fantastic and lawless visions.

I quite agree.

In saying this I have been running into a digression; but the point
which I desire to note is that in all of us, even in good men, there is
a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep. Pray, consider
whether I am right, and you agree with me.

Yes, I agree.

And now remember the character which we attributed to the democratic
man. He was supposed from his youth upwards to have been trained under
a miserly parent, who encouraged the saving appetites in him, but
discountenanced the unnecessary, which aim only at amusement and
ornament?

True.

And then he got into the company of a more refined, licentious sort of
people, and taking to all their wanton ways rushed into the opposite
extreme from an abhorrence of his father's meanness. At last, being a
better man than his corruptors, he was drawn in both directions until he
halted midway and led a life, not of vulgar and slavish passion, but
of what he deemed moderate indulgence in various pleasures. After this
manner the democrat was generated out of the oligarch?

Yes, he said; that was our view of him, and is so still.

And now, I said, years will have passed away, and you must conceive this
man, such as he is, to have a son, who is brought up in his father's
principles.

I can imagine him.

Then you must further imagine the same thing to happen to the son
which has already happened to the father:--he is drawn into a perfectly
lawless life, which by his seducers is termed perfect liberty; and his
father and friends take part with his moderate desires, and the opposite
party assist the opposite ones. As soon as these dire magicians and
tyrant-makers find that they are losing their hold on him, they contrive
to implant in him a master passion, to be lord over his idle and
spendthrift lusts--a sort of monstrous winged drone--that is the only
image which will adequately describe him.

Yes, he said, that is the only adequate image of him.

And when his other lusts, amid clouds of ince