The Politician is a Slave
The politician must needs be a man of many sides and many forms. He must be a different man in peace from what he is in war. He resists the few with vigorous action, but uses persuasion in his dealings with the many.
When the would-be popular orator mounts the platform, like a slave in the market, he becomes a bond-servant instead of a free man, and, through the seeming honours which he receives, the captive of a thousand masters. He is also the prey of wild beasts, and the vainglory which lies in ambush and then seizes and destroys those who indulge it is a savage beast.
Politicians have not one but a multitude of masters who buy them one from another, each waiting to take his turn in the succession. They are sold again and again like bad servants change their masters. Because, they are capricious and fitful in character, and ever hankering after novelty, they cannot endure their old lords.
The Multitude a Eunuch
The multitude which purchases the politician is in very truth a eunuch, possessing to all appearance the organs of generation but deprived of the power of using them, just as those who suffer from cataract have eyes but lack the active use of them and cannot see. The multitude is unproductive of wisdom, though it seems to practise virtue. It says what is right, but it thinks and does the opposite. It prefers the spurious to the genuine, because it is under the dominion of appearances and does not practise what is truly excellent.
Paradoxical though it be, this eunuch mates with a wife. For the multitude woos desire as a man woos a woman, and makes her his medium in all that he says and does, and takes her as his counsellor in all things great and small, whether decency sanctions them or not, and is wont to pay little heed to the promptings of reason.
Like a licentious woman the desire of the multitudes makes love to the politician. “Forward, lad,” she says, “forward, to my mate, the multitude. Forget your own old ways, the habits, the words, the actions in which you were bred. Obey me, wait on me and do all that gives me pleasure.”
The Ideal Lawgiver
Moses, through God’s providence, became king and lawgiver and high priest and prophet.
To command what should be done and forbid what should not be done is the peculiar function of law; so that it follows at once that the king is a living law and the law a just king. But a king and lawgiver ought to have under his purview not only human but divine things; for, without God’s directing care, the affairs of kings and subjects cannot go aright. He needs the chief priesthood, so that, fortified with the perfect knowledge of the service of God, he may receive prevention of evil and participation in good from the gracious Being . Since to a mortal creature countless things both human and divine are wrapped in obscurity, Moses necessarily obtained prophecy also, in order that through the providence of God he might discover what by reasoning he could not grasp.
Beautiful and all-harmonious is the union of these four faculties. Intertwined with each other, they move in rhythmic concord, mutually receiving and repaying benefits, and thus imitate the virgin Graces whom an immutable law of nature forbids to be separated. One may justly say of them, what is often said of the virtues, that to have one is to have all.
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References:
- Philo. Philo: Volume VI. Trans. F. H. Colson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1950.
- “Philo of Alexandria”. Early Jewish Writings. Accessed March 13, 2018. http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/philo.html