[45] Is it not well to pray that the flock linked to each one of us by a common birth and a common growth may not be left without a ruler and guide? So might mob-rule, the very worst of bad constitutions, the counterfeit of democracy, which is the best of them, infect us, while we spend our days in ceaseless experience of disorders, tumults and intestine broils.
[46] Anarchy, however, the mother of mob-rule, is not our only danger. We have to dread also the uprising of some aspirant to sovereign power, forcibly setting law at naught. For a tyrant is a natural enemy. In cities this enemy is man; to body and soul and all the interests of each of these, it is an utterly savage mind, that has turned our inner citadel into a fortress from which to assail us.
[47] Nor is it only from these tyrannies that we derive no benefit. We gain nothing from the rule and governance of men who are too good and gentle. For kindness is a quality open to contempt, and injurious to both sides, both rulers and subjects. The former, owing to the slight esteem in which they are held by those placed under their authority, are powerless to set right anything that is wrong either with individual citizens or with the commonwealth. In some instances they are actually compelled to abdicate. Their subjects, as the result of habitual contempt for their rulers, have come to disregard their moral suasion, and undeterred by fear, have, at the cost of incurring a great evil, made the acquisition of stubbornness.
[48] These, therefore, we must regard as differing in no respect from cattle, nor their rulers from cattle-rearers. The latter induce them to luxuriate in abundance of material comforts; the former, powerless to bear the overfeeding, wax wanton. But our mind ought to rule as a goat-herd, or a cow-herd, or a shepherd, or, to use a general term, as a herdsman, as one who chooses both for himself and the creatures he tends what is advantageous in preference to what is agreeable.