Republic

And did we not say that this conviction and way of speech brings with it a community in pleasures and pains? And rightly, too. Then these citizens, above all others, will have one and the same thing in common which they will name mine, and by virtue of this communion they will have their pleasures and pains in common. Quite so. And is not the cause of this, besides the general constitution of the state, the community of wives and children among the guardians? It will certainly be the chief cause, he said. But we further agreed that this unity is the greatest blessing for a state, and we compared a well governed state to the human body in its relation to the pleasure and pain of its parts. And we were right in so agreeing. Then it is the greatest blessing for a state of which the community of women and children among the helpers has been shown to be the cause. Quite so, he said. And this is consistent with what we said before. For we said, I believe, that these helpers must not possess houses of their own or land or any other property, but that they should receive from the other citizens for their support the wage of their guardianship and all spend it in common. That was the condition of their being true guardians. Right, he said. Is it not true, then, as I am trying to say, that those former and these present prescriptions tend to make them still more truly guardians and prevent them from distracting the city by referring mine not to the same but to different things, one man dragging off to his own house anything he is able to acquire apart from the rest, and another doing the same to his own separate house, and having women and children apart, thus introducing into the state the pleasures and pains of individuals? They should all rather, we said, share one conviction about their own, tend to one goal, and so far as practicable have one experience of pleasure and pain. By all means, he said. Then will not law-suits and accusations against one another vanish, one may say, from among them, because they have nothing in private possession but their bodies, but all else in common? So that we can count on their being free from the dissensions that arise among men from the possession of property, children, and kin. They will necessarily be quit of these, he said. And again, there could not rightly arise among them any law-suit for assault or bodily injury. For as between age-fellows we shall say that self-defence is honorable and just, thereby compelling them to keep their bodies in condition. Right, he said.