t point they are alike hurtful to body and mind, and the
excess may be avoided. When in excess, they may be rightly called
expensive pleasures, in opposition to the useful ones. And the drone, as
we called him, is the slave of these unnecessary pleasures and desires,
whereas the miserly oligarch is subject only to the necessary.

The oligarch changes into the democrat in the following manner:--The
youth who has had a miserly bringing up, gets a taste of the drone's
honey; he meets with wild companions, who introduce him to every new
pleasure. As in the State, so in the individual, there are allies on
both sides, temptations from without and passions from within; there is
reason also and external influences of parents and friends in alliance
with the oligarchical principle; and the two factions are in violent
conflict with one another. Sometimes the party of order prevails, but
then again new desires and new disorders arise, and the whole mob of
passions gets possession of the Acropolis, that is to say, the soul,
which they find void and unguarded by true words and works. Falsehoods
and illusions ascend to take their place; the prodigal goes back into
the country of the Lotophagi or drones, and openly dwells there. And if
any offer of alliance or parley of individual elders comes from home,
the false spirits shut the gates of the castle and permit no one to
enter,--there is a battle, and they gain the victory; and straightway
making alliance with the desires, they banish modesty, which they call
folly, and send temperance over the border. When the house has been
swept and garnished, they dress up the exiled vices, and, crowning them
with garlands, bring them back under new names. Insolence they call good
breeding, anarchy freedom, waste magnificence, impudence courage. Such
is the process by which the youth passes from the necessary pleasures to
the unnecessary. After a while he divides his time impartially between
them; and perhaps, when he gets older and the violence of passion
has abated, he restores some of the exiles and lives in a sort of
equilibrium, indulging first one pleasure and then another; and if
reason comes and tells him that some pleasures are good and honourable,
and others bad and vile, he shakes his head and says that he can make
no distinction between them. Thus he lives in the fancy of the hour;
sometimes he takes to drink, and then he turns abstainer; he practises
in the gymnasium or he does nothing