Malady

Guest: But a disease, the most destructive of all, infects cities with the greatest consequences.

Socrates Junior: What does this concern?

Guest: It concerns the whole structure of living. Those who are remarkably modest are always prepared to live a quiet, private life, attending to their own concerns. Being in this manner, they are of the mind that they should peacefully associate both with their fellow citizens and with foreign visitors. However, through this kind of love, which is more inappropriate than suitable, when undertaking that which they wish to accomplish, they become unknowingly weakened, lack vitality, and render their young the same way. Hence, they are always subjugated, and over time, their selves, their children, and the whole city incrementally transition from being free to becoming slaves.

Socrates Junior: You speak of a most dire suffering...

Guest: Those who are rolled like hollow cylinders in ignorance and without spirit are subjugated to paid slavery...

Guest: Those who are modest seek after their own practices and always endeavour to enter into marriage with those who share the same characteristics, and then they marry their children into the same resemblance as self...

Guest: A soul that has existed in this manner for many generations is full of dishonour and empty of fortitude and naturally becomes inappropriately lethargic and completely impaired.

Plato, The Politician

Where the Classical Philosopher, in understanding the Beautiful, the Just and the Good, will harmonise and bind the parts into a cohesive whole, the souls of the individuals described above will be unstable in nature because their parts fail to bind together.

Tyranny is always waiting in the shadows of democracy's low points. Govern Self wisely.

Note from the editor of Classical Philosophy