We shall then have some one who
will answer our enquiries.

By all means.

Let me ask you not to forget the parallel of the individual and the
State; bearing this in mind, and glancing in turn from one to the other
of them, will you tell me their respective conditions?

What do you mean? he asked.

Beginning with the State, I replied, would you say that a city which is
governed by a tyrant is free or enslaved?

No city, he said, can be more completely enslaved.

And yet, as you see, there are freemen as well as masters in such a
State?

Yes, he said, I see that there are--a few; but the people, speaking
generally, and the best of them are miserably degraded and enslaved.

Then if the man is like the State, I said, must not the same rule
prevail? his soul is full of meanness and vulgarity--the best elements
in him are enslaved; and there is a small ruling part, which is also the
worst and maddest.

Inevitably.

And would you say that the soul of such an one is the soul of a freeman,
or of a slave?

He has the soul of a slave, in my opinion.

And the State which is enslaved under a tyrant is utterly incapable of
acting voluntarily?

Utterly incapable.

And also the soul which is under a tyrant (I am speaking of the soul
taken as a whole) is least capable of doing what she desires; there is a
gadfly which goads her, and she is full of trouble and remorse?

Certainly.

And is the city which is under a tyrant rich or poor?

Poor.

And the tyrannical soul must be always poor and insatiable?

True.

And must not such a State and such a man be always full of fear?

Yes, indeed.

Is there any State in which you will find more of lamentation and sorrow
and groaning and pain?

Certainly not.

And is there any man in whom you will find more of this sort of misery
than in the tyrannical man, who is in a fury of passions and desires?

Impossible.

Reflecting upon these and similar evils, you held the tyrannical State
to be the most miserable of States?

And I was right, he said.

Certainly, I said. And when you see the same evils in the tyrannical
man, what do you say of him?

I say that he is by far the most miserable of all men.

There, I said, I think that you are beginning to go wrong.

What do you mean?

I do not think that he has as yet reached the utmost extreme of misery.

Then who is more miserable?

One of whom I am about to speak.

Who is that?

He who is of a tyrannical