THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

Page 484
conceptions of the Golden Age, to those that still remained vivid. In his malicious comedy ‘The Birds’, Aristophanes indicated the scale and the power which the
popularity of this image of pleasure had assumed. The image of pleasure became a rebellious one in the play in so far as it was never accommodated, never remained
undisturbed. After all, the heroes of the comedy, Euelpides (Hopegood) and Peisthetairos (Trusty Friend), who were little satisfied with the earthly Fortunate Islands,
decided to remain in the clouds with the birds and to propose that they found a new state in the air. Yet the different, considerably more earthly and actually existing
utopia of that time is also already cited in the comedy. It is really against this that Aristophanes directs his armoury of wit:
A man will never die of want any more,
Because everything is the property of everybody,
Bread, cake, garments, salted meat,
Wine, peas, lentils and garlands.
This verse — one like it has already appeared in connection with derided wishful images (Vol. I, p. 436) — undoubtedly refers to recollections of the Golden Age
which were beginning to grow dangerous and serious at that time. The verse satirizes the plebeian ‘natural state’ with its reference to lentils, and with the profusion of
other goods it satirizes the Hedonist ideal, or rather: the democratic sell­out of this ideal. The violent belching which fills such travesties is Epicurus among the people as
it were; freedom is meant to appear as gluttony. It appeared among the Hedonists themselves as wine for all, in so far as they are human beings and not slaves. The
freedom of pleasure was democratic, despite boundless egoism; for happiness was conceived in generous terms once again, in terms of live and let live, with polite
good manners.
Plato's dream of the Doric state
It is one thing to mock such wishes, another to render them harmless. Plato undertook to do the latter, in such a way that he both took up the utopian drive and
reversed its trend towards freedom. Plato wrote the first detailed work on the best state, the ‘Republic’, and this work is as well thought­out as it is reactionary. Here
there are no vague dreams any more, no vague notions dreamed through to the end, but neither is some