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Timocracy can arise only in the few fortunate cases where material and social forces have driven men to that situation in which their souls can profit most, and where they find no influences more persuasive than those which are most liberating. It is clear, for instance, that timocracy would exclude the family or greatly weaken it.
From Timocracy the transition is to Democracy, they being contiguous: for it is the nature of Timocracy to be in the hands of a multitude, and all in the same grade of property are equal. Democracy is the least vicious of all, since herein the form of the constitution undergoes least change.
He who enjoys certain advantages from the possession of ten acres, will excite a party against him in those who have nine; and the arguments that had been used for the franchise of the one are equally valid for the franchise of the other. Limitations of power by property are barriers against a tide which perpetually advances. Timocracy, therefore, almost invariably paved the way to democracy.
It developed itself slowly, unconsciously, continuously passing the allotted orbit of royalty, oligarchy, aristocracy, timocracy, tyranny, till at length it arrived at its dazzling zenith, blazed waned and disappeared. After the successful issue of his legislative attempts, we next hear of Theseus less as the monarch of history than as the hero of song.
It is a spirit hardly to be maintained without a close organisation and much training; and as military and religious timocracies have depended on discipline and a minute rule of life, so an industrial timocracy would have to depend on guilds and unions, which would make large inroads upon personal freedom.
The new timocracy thus changed the letter of the constitution only to remain faithful to its spirit, while it at the same time in the mildest possible form attempted at least to check the disgraceful purchase of votes with all the evils therewith connected.
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 honour? I know of no name for such a government other than timocracy, or perhaps timarchy.
Where all things are done according to Reason and the best man in the nation rules, it is a Kingdom; where more than one rule according to Reason and Fight, it is an Aristocracy; where the government is according to Desire and offices depend on money, that constitution is called a Timocracy.
When the French explorers entered it, it was a valley of aboriginal, anarchic individualism, with little movable spots of barbaric communistic timocracy, as Plato would doubtless have classified those migratory, predatory kingdoms of the hundreds of red kings, contemporary with King Donnacona, whom Cartier found on the St. Lawrence communities governed by the warlike, restless spirit.
The monarchial or paternal type has superiority on one side, and demands honour as well as love on the other. In aristocracy, the relation is one of merit, and the greater love is given to the better. In timocracy, and among brothers, there is equality; and hence the most frequent friendships. In the relations of the family, friendship varies with the different situations.
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