YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.
STRANGER: And the government of the few they distinguish by the names of
aristocracy and oligarchy.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.
STRANGER: Democracy alone, whether rigidly observing the laws or not, and
whether the multitude rule over the men of property with their consent or
against their consent, always in ordinary language has the same name.
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
STRANGER: But do you suppose that any form of government which is defined
by these characteristics of the one, the few, or the many, of poverty or
wealth, of voluntary or compulsory submission, of written law or the
absence of law, can be a right one?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Why not?
STRANGER: Reflect; and follow me.
YOUNG SOCRATES: In what direction?
STRANGER: Shall we abide by what we said at first, or shall we retract our
words?
YOUNG SOCRATES: To what do you refer?
STRANGER: If I am not mistaken, we said that royal power was a science?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
STRANGER: And a science of a peculiar kind, which was selected out of the
rest as having a character which is at once judicial and authoritative?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
STRANGER: And there was one kind of authority over lifeless things and
another other living animals; and so we proceeded in the division step by
step up to this point, not losing the idea of science, but unable as yet to
determine the nature of the particular science?
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
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