Very true, he said.
He rejects all advice, Neither does he receive or let pass into the fortress any true word of advice; if any one says to him that some [C]pleasures are the satisfactions of good and noble desires, and others of evil desires, and that he ought to use and honour some and chastise and master the others—whenever this is repeated to him he shakes his head and says that they are all alike, and that one is as good as another.
Yes, he said; that is the way with him.
passing his life in the alternation from one extreme to another. Yes, I said, he lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the hour; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute; then he becomes a water-drinker, and tries to get thin; [D]then he takes a turn at gymnastics; sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then once more living the life of a philosopher; often he is busy with politics, and starts to his feet and says and does whatever comes into his head; and, if he is emulous of any one who is a warrior, off he is in that direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His life has neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he terms joy and bliss and freedom; and so he goes on.
[E] Yes, he replied, he is all liberty and equality.
He is ‘not one, but all mankind’s epitome.’ Yes, I said; his life is motley and manifold and an epitome of the lives of many;—he answers to the State which we described as fair and spangled. And many a man and many a woman will take him for their pattern, and many a constitution and many an example of manners is contained in him.
Just so.
[562] Let him then be set over against democracy; he may truly be called the democratic man. 270
Let that be his place, he said.
Tyranny and the tyrant. Last of all comes the most beautiful of all, man and State alike, tyranny and the tyrant; these we have now to consider.