yrant?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: And this we believe to be the origin of the tyrant and the
king, of oligarchies, and aristocracies, and democracies,--because men
are offended at the one monarch, and can never be made to believe that
any one can be worthy of such authority, or is able and willing in the
spirit of virtue and knowledge to act justly and holily to all; they
fancy that he will be a despot who will wrong and harm and slay whom he
pleases of us; for if there could be such a despot as we describe, they
would acknowledge that we ought to be too glad to have him, and that he
alone would be the happy ruler of a true and perfect State.

YOUNG SOCRATES: To be sure.

STRANGER: But then, as the State is not like a beehive, and has no
natural head who is at once recognized to be the superior both in body
and in mind, mankind are obliged to meet and make laws, and endeavour to
approach as nearly as they can to the true form of government.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And when the foundation of politics is in the letter only
and in custom, and knowledge is divorced from action, can we wonder,
Socrates, at the miseries which there are, and always will be, in
States? Any other art, built on such a foundation and thus conducted,
would ruin all that it touched. Ought we not rather to wonder at the
natural strength of the political bond? For States have endured all
this, time out of mind, and yet some of them still remain and are not
overthrown, though many of them, like ships at sea, founder from time
to time, and perish and have perished and will hereafter perish, through
the badness of their pilots and crews, who have the worst sort of
ignorance of the highest truths--I mean to say, that they are wholly
unaquainted with politics, of which, above all other sciences, they
believe themselves to have acquired the most perfect knowledge.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Then the question arises:--which of these untrue forms of
government is the least oppressive to their subjects, though they are
all oppressive; and which is the worst of them? Here is a consideration
which is beside our present purpose, and yet having regard to the whole
it seems to influence all our actions: we must examine it.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, we must.

STRANGER: You may say that of the three forms, the same is at once the
hardest and the easiest.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: I am speaking of the th