At the
end of this time, the world left to itself would dissolve into
chaos, but the Deity again seizes the helm and restores the original
conditions, and the whole process begins anew. The first half of
such a world-cycle corresponds to the Golden Age of legend in which
men lived happily and simply; we have now unfortunately reached some
point in the period of decadence.
Plato applies the theory of degradation in his study of political
communities. [Footnote: Plato's philosophy of history. In the myth
of the Statesman and the last Books of the Republic. The best
elucidation of these difficult passages will be found in the notes
and appendix to Book viii. in J. Adam's edition of the Republic
(1902).] He conceives his own Utopian aristocracy as having existed
somewhere towards the beginning of the period of the world's
relapse, when things were not so bad, [Footnote: Similarly he places
the ideal society which he describes in the Critias 9000 years
before Solon. The state which he plans in the Laws is indeed
imagined as a practicable project in his own day, but then it is
only a second-best.
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