Timocracy

“ Shall we follow our old plan, which we adopted with a view to clearness, of taking the State first and then proceeding to the individual, and begin with the government of honor?—I know of no name for such a government other than timocracy or perhaps timarchy. We will compare with this the like character in the individual; and, after that, consider oligarchy and the oligarchical man; and then again we will turn our attention to democracy and the democratical man ”

“ A timocracy would therefore seem to unite the advantages of all forms of government and to avoid their respective abuses. It would promote freedom scientifically. It might be a monarchy, if men existed fit to be kings; but they would have to give signs of their fitness and their honours would probably not be hereditary. Like aristocracy, it would display a great diversity of institutions and superposed classes, a stimulating variety in ways of living; it would be favourable to art and science and to noble idiosyncrasies. ”

“ We have thus gone through the four successive depravations which our perfect city will undergo — timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, despotism. Step by step we have passed from the best to the worst — from one 83extreme to the other. As is the city, so is the individual citizen — good or bad: the despotic city is like the despotic individual, — and so about the rest. ”

“ The secondary causes which mar the perfection of the Platonic ‘city of the sun’ are to be found in the intellectual decay of the race consequent on injudicious marriages and in the Philistine elevation of physical achievements over mental culture; while the hierarchical succession of Timocracy and Oligarchy, Democracy and Tyranny, is dwelt on at great length and its causes analysed in a very dramatic and psychological manner, if not in that sanctioned by the actual order of history. ”

“ If such is the tendency towards decay in all human institutions, how jealous ought the people to be of the most trifling privileges, arrogated exclusively by certain classes.
And what species of tyranny is worse than that which attempts to control a man’s private actions, his worship, his domestic arrangements, and his pleasures? What can be more absurd than for a certain class, for the most part not a whit better educated than the rest, to assume the dictatorship in all matters relating to politics, religion, or the arts? ”

“ It is hardly too much to say that at this early epoch despotism is the best friend of humanity and, paradoxical as it may sound, of liberty. For after all there is more liberty in the best sense—liberty to think our own thoughts and to fashion our own destinies—under the most absolute despotism, the most grinding tyranny, than under the apparent freedom of savage life, where the individual’s lot is cast from the cradle to the grave in the iron mould of hereditary custom.
Benefits rendered to civilisation by magic. ”

“ Nevertheless, observing those men who painfully serve the tyrant in order to win some profit from his tyranny and from the subjection of the populace, I am often overcome with amazement at their wickedness and sometimes by pity for their folly. For, in all honesty, can it be in any way except in folly that you approach a tyrant, withdrawing further from your liberty and, so to speak, embracing with both hands your servitude? Let such men lay aside briefly their ambition, or let them forget for a moment their avarice, and look at themselves as they really are. ”

“ By cunning and obsequiousness they sought and obtained power; by duplicity and fraud they amassed fortunes; by luxury and tyranny they oppressed the world. Every species of absurdity, art, hypocrisy, avarice, ambition and despotism, under the guise of sanctity was embodied in their organization, and illustrated in their conduct. ”

“ Tetrachordon.
'If men within themselves would be governed by reason, and not generally give up their understanding to a double tyranny of custom from without, and blind affections within, they would discern better what it is to favour and uphold the tyrant of a nation. But, being slaves within doors, no wonder that they strive so much to have the public state conformably governed to the inward vicious rule by which they govern themselves. ”

“ What horror can their mock-tragedies excite in those who have contemplated the Place de la Revolution? or who can smile at a farce in ridicule of monarchy, that beholds the Convention, and knows the characters of the men who compose it?—But in most of these wretched productions the absurdity is luckily not less conspicuous than the immoral intention: their Princes, their Priests, their Nobles, are all tyrannical, vicious, and miserable; yet the common people, living under these same vicious tyrants, are described as models of virtue, hospitality, and happiness. ”

“ Our correspondent's easy surrender to appearances, in his phrase "timorous and truculent," gives reason for pointing a moral without strenuous effort.
The alliteration is forceful, but the ideas thus associated seem to be mutually nullifying. The timorous man, when brought to bay, may in desperation become "truculent," but that is not his normal and characteristic state. Can it be that our correspondent was betrayed into confounding the "truculent" man with the truckler? If so, his lameness in etymology comports well with his obliqueness of vision in economics and sociology. ”

“ Thus, kings and chiefs are possessed of great power, and it is death for their subjects to address them directly; but a minister or other person of greater mana than common, can approach them unharmed, and can in turn be approached by their inferiors without risk. . . . So, too, indirect taboos depend for their strength on the mana of him who opposes them; if it is a chief or a priest, they are more powerful than those imposed by a common person.”
The fact that a taboo is transmissible has surely given rise to the effort of removing it through expiatory ceremonies. ”

“ With a tone and look of calm and fearless irony, the scholar thus spoke, and left the room; but when he was on the stairs, he paused, and caught at the balustrade,—the sickness as of terror at some danger past, or to be, came over him; and this contrast between the self-command, or simulation, which belongs to moral courage, and the feebleness of natural and constitutional cowardice, would have been sublime if shown in a noble cause. In one so corrupt, it but betrayed a nature doubly formidable; for treachery and murder hatch their brood amidst the folds of a hypocrite’s cowardice. ”

“ To the eyes and ears of the temperate part of the public, and to the breasts of suffering thousands in the provinces, be the melancholy appeal, whether the present unnatural rebellion has not been made a foundation for the completest system of tyranny that ever God, in his displeasure, suffered for a time to be exercised over a froward and stubborn generation. ”

“ You invent all sorts of vices, under pretence of making laws for preserving virtue; and the anomalous artificialities of conduct yourselves produce, you say you are born with; you make a machine by the perversest art you can think of, and you call it, with a sigh, 'Human Nature.' With a host of good dispositions struggling at your breasts, you insist upon libelling the Almighty, and declaring that he meant you to be wicked. Nay, you even call the man mischievous and seditious who begs and implores you to be one jot better than you are. ”

“ But then, on the other side, those that knew not how to live in a democracy, and had been used to make their humble court to the men of power, though they openly professed to rejoice at the death of the tyrant, nevertheless, secretly reviling Timoleon, as one that had committed an impious and abominable act, drove him into melancholy and dejection. ”

“ To enumerate and describe all the modes in which men have pushed, or fought, or wormed their way by force or by fraud, by their own courage and wisdom or by the cowardice and folly of others, to supreme power, might furnish the theme of a political treatise such as I have no pretension to write; for my present purpose it suffices if I can trace the magician’s progress in some savage and barbarous tribes from the rank of a sorcerer to the dignity of a king. ”

“ Whoever wears a black robe, and is not ashamed of filthy garments, and presents a dirty face to the public view, obtains a tyrannical authority.” False miracles, absurd prophecies, and ludicrous visions were the instruments with which these and other impostors established their power. Mad enthusiasts imprisoned themselves in dungeons, or exposed themselves on the tops of pillars, naked, except by the growth of their tangled hair, and the coating of filth upon their persons,—and gained credit among the ignorant for self-denial and abnegation of the world. ”

“ Artists have visited despots, not as subjects to be tyrannised over, but as wandering wonder-makers, as fascinating vagrant personalities, to be entertained and charmed and suffered to be at peace, and allowed to create. There is this to be said in favour of the despot, that he, being an individual, may have culture, while the mob, being a monster, has none. ”

“ I grieve at your ignorance, Timocles, and I will instruct you in the truth, in order that knowing that there really exists a God in three hypostases, you may obey this God as a child obeys its father."
Timocles interrupted him.
"Refrain, stranger, from showing me your doctrines, and do not imagine that you will persuade me to share your opinions. All discussions are useless. My opinion is to have no opinion. My life is devoid of trouble because I have no preferences. ”

“ He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart who wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion and permanence to fugitive esteem. It is a sour, malignant, and envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long flourished in splendour and in honour. ”

“ Two boys, one the fool of fear, and the other of temerity, were fit antagonists for that stupendous system, whose roots are in the bowels of the earth, and whose head is among the stars,—you escape from a convent! you defy a power that has defied sovereigns! A power whose influence is unlimited, indefinable, and unknown, even to those who exercise it, as there are mansions so vast, that their inmates, to their last hour, have never visited all the apartments;—a power whose operation is like its motto,—one and indivisible. ”

“ He stakes not only his 'fortune,' but also his children and liberty, which he cares very little about, everywhere, until we incite him to do so—as, of course, we ought to do, for every motive 'human and divine.'
There is no doubt, then, that this propensity is part and parcel of 'the unsophisticated savage.' Let us turn to the eminently civilized races of antiquity—the men whose example we have more or less followed in every possible matter, sociality, politics, religion—they were all gamblers, more or less. ”

“ Eagerly now, thirty pairs of fierce eyes were bent on that which moved beneath their gaze—a passing of men, mounted and armed, to the number of about three score; and fierce brows bent in hatred, as they scowled upon the representative of that irresistible Power, which, with all its failings and errors of judgment, yet in the long run held in salutary restraint the excesses of their wild and predatory race. ”

“ Living under governments essentially despotic—living under laws that are framed only to screen the authorities—living in lands where justice can be bought and sold, like any other marketable commodity—living among a people ever ripe for any and every revolution—living in this state, they live suspicious of each other ”

“ The thoughtless vulgar are ever prone to magnify the brilliant exploits of arms, which dazzle ordinary understandings, and prevent any account being taken of the cost and the crime that are so often hid in the guise of success. All merit of that shining kind is sure of passing current for more than it is really worth; and the eye is turned indifferently upon, or even scornfully from, the unpretending virtue of the true friend to his species, the minister who devotes all his cares to stay the worst of crimes that can be committed, the last of calamities that can be endured by man. ”

“ I would have to adapt my thoughts to the thoughts of others. So Society became to me a form of spiritual tyranny, a state where I could not be myself, but had to play the complacent ape among people who were often uncongenial. ”

“ The strain of tyranny sustained by force and craft for generations, the abuse of power and pleasure, the isolation and the dread in which the despots lived habitually, bred a kind of hereditary madness. ”

“ If you plunge into the same depravity, if you imitate their excesses, and hanker after the same vanities, you will become royalists as well as they, and liable to be subdued by the same enemies, or by others in your turn; who, placing their reliance on the same religious principles, the same patience, the same integrity and discretion which made you strong, will deservedly triumph over you who are immersed in debauchery, in the luxury and the sloth of kings. ”

“ But, at the same time, the vices of the human character had acquired a development proportioned to the vigour of men’s minds. Among the nobility, whom alone the laws seemed to protect, absolute power had produced its habitual effect,—an intoxication approaching to madness, and a ferocity of which later times afford no example. ”