All is lost in the desire of heaping up gold and silver; anybody is ready to do anything, right or wrong, for the sake of eating and drinking, and the indulgence of his animal passions.

'Most true.' This is one of the causes which prevents a man being a good soldier, or anything else which is good; it converts the temperate and orderly into shopkeepers or servants, and the brave into burglars or pirates.

Many of these latter are men of ability, and are greatly to be pitied, because their souls are hungering and thirsting all their lives long.

The bad forms of government (2) are another reason--democracy, oligarchy, tyranny, which, as I was saying, are not states, but states of discord, in which the rulers are afraid of their subjects, and therefore do not like them to become rich, or noble, or valiant.

Now our state will escape both these causes of evil; the society is perfectly free, and has plenty of leisure, and is not allowed by the laws to be absorbed in the pursuit of wealth; hence we have an excellent field for a perfect education, and for the introduction of martial pastimes.