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[562e] Is it not inevitable that in such a state the spirit of liberty should go to all lengths1?” “Of course.” “And this anarchical temper,” said I, “my friend, must penetrate into private homes and finally enter into the very animals.2” “Just what do we mean by that?” he said. “Why,” I said, “the father habitually tries to resemble the child and is afraid of his sons, and the son likens himself to the father and feels no awe or fear of his parents,3

1 Cf. Laws 699 Eἐπὶ πᾶσαν ἐλευθερίαν, Aristoph.Lysistr. 543ἐπὶ πᾶν ἰέναι, Soph.El. 615εἰς πᾶν ἔργον.

2 Cf. 563 C, Laws 942 D.

3 A common conservative complaint. Cf. Isoc.Areop. 49, Aristoph.Clouds, 998, 1321 ff., Xen.Rep. Ath. 1. 10, Mem. iii. 5. 15; Newman i. pp. 174 and 339-340. Cf. also Renan, Souvenirs, xviii.-xx., on American vulgarity and liberty; Harold Lasswell, quoting Bryce, “Modern Democracies,” in Methods of Social Science, ed. by Stuart A. Rice, p. 376: “The spirit of equality is alleged to have diminished the respect children owe to parents, and the young to the old. This was noted by Plato in Athens. But surely the family relations depend much more on the social, structural and religious ideas of a race than on forms of government”; Whitman, “Where the men and women think lightly of the laws . . . where children are taught to be laws to themselves . . . there the great city stands.

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