Republic

For there are some, it appears, who will not be contented with this sort of fare or with this way of life; but couches will have to be added thereto and tables and other furniture, yes, and relishes and myrrh and incense and girls[*](On flute-girls as the accompaniment of a banquet Cf. Symposium 176 E, Aristophanes Ach. 1090-1092, Catullus 13. 4. But apart from this, the sudden mention of an incongruous item in a list is a device of Aristophanic humor which even the philosophic Emerson did not disdain: The love of little maids and berries.) and cakes—all sorts of all of them. And the requirements we first mentioned, houses and garments and shoes, will no longer be confined to necessities,[*](τὰ ἁναγκαῖα predicatively, in the measure prescribed by necessity. Cf. 369 D the indispensable minimum of a city. The historical order is: (1) arts of necessity, (2) arts of pleasure and luxury, (3) disinterested science. Cf. Critias 110 A, Aristotle Met. 981 b 20.) but we must set painting to work and embroidery, and procure gold and ivory and similar adornments, must we not?Yes, he said. Then we shall have to enlarge the city again. For that healthy state is no longer sufficient, but we must proceed to swell out its bulk and fill it up with a multitude of things that exceed the requirements of necessity in states, as, for example, the entire class of huntsmen, and the imitators,[*](θηρευταί and μιμηταί are generalized Platonic categories, including much not ordinarily signified by the words. For a list of such Platonic generalizations Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, note 500.) many of them occupied with figures and colors and many with music—the poets and their assistants, rhapsodists, actors, chorus-dancers, contractors[*](Contractors generally, and especially theatrical managers.)—and the manufacturers of all kinds of articles, especially those that have to do with women’s adornment. And so we shall also want more servitors. Don’t you think that we shall need tutors, nurses wet[*](The mothers of the idyllic state nursed their own children, but in the ideal state the wives of the guardians are relieved of this burden by special provision. Cf. 460 D.) and dry, beauty-shop ladies, barbers[*](The rhetoricians of the empire liked to repeat that no barber was known at Rome in the first 200 or 300 years of the city.) and yet again cooks and chefs? And we shall have need, further, of swineherds; there were none of these creatures[*](Illogical idiom referring to the swine. Cf. 598 C.) in our former city, for we had no need of them, but in this city there will be this further need; and we shall also require other cattle in great numbers if they are to be eaten, shall we not? Yes. Doctors, too, are something whose services[*](χρείαις: Greek idiom could use either singular or plural. Cf. 410 A; Phaedo 87 C; Laws 630 E. The plural here avoids hiatus.) we shall be much more likely to require if we live thus than as before? Much. And the territory, I presume, that was then sufficient to feed the then population, from being adequate will become too small. Is that so or not? It is. Then we shall have to cut out a cantle[*](Cf. Isocrates iii. 34.) of our neighbor’s land if we are to have enough for pasture and ploughing, and they in turn of ours if they too abandon themselves to the unlimited[*](Cf. 591 D. Natural desires are limited. Luxury and unnatural forms of wealth are limitless, as the Greek moralists repeat from Solon down.) acquisition of wealth, disregarding the limit set by our necessary wants. Inevitably, Socrates. We shall go to war[*](The unnecessary desires are the ultimate causes of wars.Phaedo 66 C. The simple life once abandoned, war is inevitable. My lord, said St. Francis to the Bishop of Assisi, if we possessed property we should have need of arms for its defense (Sabatier, p. 81). Similarly that very dissimilar thinker, Mandeville. Cf. on 372 C. Plato recognizes the struggle for existence (Spencer, Data of Ethics, 6), and the bellum omnium contra omnes, Laws 625 E. Cf. Sidgwick, Method of Ethics, i, 2: The Republic of Plato seems in many respects divergent from the reality. And yet he contemplates war as a permanent, unalterable fact to be provided for in the ideal state. Spencer on the contrary contemplates a completely evolved society in which the ethics of militarism will disappear.) as the next step, Glaucon—or what will happen? What you say, he said. And we are not yet to speak, said I, of any evil or good effect of war, but only to affirm that we have further[*](i.e. as well as the genesis of society. 369 B.) discovered the origin of war, namely, from those things from which[*](ἐξ ὧν: i.e. ἐκ τούτων ἐξ ὧν, namely the appetites and the love of money.) the greatest disasters, public and private, come to states when they come. Certainly.

Then, my friend, we must still further enlarge our city by no small increment, but by a whole army, that will march forth and fight it out with assailants in defence of all our wealth and the luxuries we have just described.How so? he said; are the citizens themselves[*](Cf. 567 E τί δέ; αὐτόθεν. In the fourth century it was found that amateur soldiers could not compete with professionals, and war became a trade (Butcher, Demosthenes p. 17). Plato arrives at the same result by his principle one man one task (370 A-B). He is not here making citizens synonymous with soldiers nor laconizing as Adam says.) not sufficient for it? Not if you, said I, and we all were right in the admission we made when we were molding our city. We surely agreed, if you remember, that it is impossible for one man to do the work of many arts well. True, he said. Well, then, said I, don’t you think that the business of fighting is an art and a profession? It is indeed, he said. Should our concern be greater, then, for the cobbler’s art than for the art of war? By no means. Can we suppose,[*](For the thought of this a fortiori or ex contrario argument cf. 421 A.) then, that while we were at pains to prevent the cobbler from attempting to be at the same time a farmer, a weaver, or a builder instead of just a cobbler, to the end that[*](ἵνα δή ironical.) we might have the cobbler’s business well done, and similarly assigned to each and every one man one occupation, for which he was fit and naturally adapted and at which he was to work all his days, at leisure[*](Cf. 370 B-C.) from other pursuits and not letting slip the right moments for doing the work well, and that yet we are in doubt whether the right accomplishment of the business of war is not of supreme moment? Is it so easy[*](The ironical argument ex contrario is continued with fresh illustrations to the end of the chapter.) that a man who is cultivating the soil will be at the same time a soldier and one who is practising cobbling or any other trade, though no man in the world could make himself a competent expert at draughts or the dice who did not practise that and nothing else from childhood[*](Cf. on 467 A.) but treated it as an occasional business? And are we to believe that a man who takes in hand a shield or any other instrument of war springs up on that very day a competent combatant in heavy armor or in any other form of warfare—though no other tool will make a man be an artist or an athlete by his taking it in hand, nor will it be of any service to those who have neither acquired the science[*](For the three requisites, science, practice, and natural ability Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, note 596, and my paper on Φύσις, Μελέτη, Ἐπιστήμη, Tr. A. Ph. A. vol. xl., 1910.) of it nor sufficiently practised themselves in its use? Great indeed, he said, would be the value of tools in that case.[*](Cf. Thucydides ii. 40.) Then, said I, in the same degree that the task of our guardians[*](First mention. Cf. 428 D note, 414 B.) is the greatest of all, it would require more leisure than any other business and the greatest science and training. I think so, said he. Does it not also require a nature adapted to that very pursuit? Of course. It becomes our task, then, it seems, if we are able, to select which and what kind of natures are suited for the guardianship of a state. Yes, ours. Upon my word, said I, it is no light task that we have taken upon ourselves. But we must not faint so far as our strength allows.