His son begins life a ruined man and takes to money-making. And the son has seen and known all this—he is a ruined man, and his fear has taught him to knock ambition and [C]passion headforemost from his bosom’s throne; humbled by poverty he takes to money-making and by mean and miserly savings and hard work gets a fortune together. Is not such an one likely to seat the concupiscent and covetous element on the vacant throne and to suffer it to play the great king within him, girt with tiara and chain and scimitar?
Most true, he replied.
[D] And when he has made reason and spirit sit down on the ground obediently on either side of their sovereign, and taught them to know their place, he compels the one to think only of how lesser sums may be turned into larger ones, and will not allow the other to worship and admire anything but riches and rich men, or to be ambitious of anything so much as the acquisition of wealth and the means of acquiring it.
Of all changes, he said, there is none so speedy or so sure as the conversion of the ambitious youth into the avaricious one.
[E] And the avaricious, I said, is the oligarchical youth?
The oligarchical man and State resemble one another in their estimation of wealth: In their toiling and saving ways, in their want of cultivation. Yes, he said; at any rate the individual out of whom he came is like the State out of which oligarchy came.
Let us then consider whether there is any likeness between them.
[554] Very good.
First, then, they resemble one another in the value which they set upon wealth? 260
Certainly.