In the second stage of decline the virtues have altogether disappeared, and the love of gain has succeeded to them; in the third stage, or democracy, the various passions are allowed to have free play, and the virtues and vices are impartially cultivated.

But this freedom, which leads to many curious extravagances of character, is in reality only a state of weakness and dissipation.

At last, one monster passion takes possession of the whole nature of man--this is tyranny.

In all of them excess--the excess first of wealth and then of freedom, is the element of decay.
The eighth book of the Republic abounds in pictures of life and fanciful allusions; the use of metaphorical language is carried to a greater extent than anywhere else in Plato.

We may remark, (1), the description of the two nations in one, which become more and more divided in the Greek Republics, as in feudal times, and perhaps also in our own; (2), the notion of democracy expressed in a sort of Pythagorean formula as equality among unequals; (3), the free and easy ways of men and animals, which are characteristic of liberty, as foreign mercenaries and universal mistrust are of the tyrant; (4), the proposal that mere debts should not be recoverable by law is a speculation which has often been entertained by reformers of the law in modern times, and is in harmony with the tendencies of modern legislation.