Republic

By all means.How, then, would the greatest benefit result? Tell me this, Glaucon. I see that you have in your house hunting-dogs and a number of pedigree cocks.[*](Cf. Laws 789 B-C.) Have you ever considered something about their unions and procreations?What?[*](The riddling question to which the response is what? is a mannerism derived from tragedy, which becomes very frequent in the later style of the Sophist, Politicus and Philebus.) he said. In the first place, I said, among these themselves, although they are a select breed, do not some prove better than the rest? They do. Do you then breed from all indiscriminately, or are you careful to breed from the best[*](This commonplace of stirpiculture or eugenics, as it is now called, begins with Theognis 184, and has thus far got no further.)? From the best. And, again, do you breed from the youngest or the oldest, or, so far as may be, from those in their prime? From those in their prime. And if they are not thus bred, you expect, do you not, that your birds and hounds will greatly degenerate? I do, he said. And what of horses and other animals? I said; is it otherwise with them? It would be strange if it were, said he. Gracious, said I, dear friend, how imperative, then, is our need of the highest skill in our rulers, if the principle holds also for mankind. Well, it does, he said, but what of it? This, said I, that they will have to employ many of those drugs[*](A recurrence to the metaphor of 389 B, as we are reminded below in D.) of which we were speaking. We thought that an inferior physician sufficed for bodies that do not need drugs but yield to diet and regimen. But when it is necessary to prescribe drugs we know that a more enterprising and venturesome physician is required. True; but what is the pertinency? This, said I: it seems likely that our rulers will have to make considerable use of falsehood and deception for the benefit[*](Cf. 389 B, 414 C, and Laws 663 D ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ ψεύδεσθαι ) of their subjects. We said, I believe, that the use of that sort of thing was in the category of medicine. And that was right, he said. In our marriages, then, and the procreation of children, it seems there will be no slight need of this kind of right. How so? It follows from our former admissions, I said, that the best men must cohabit with the best women in as many cases as possible and the worst with the worst in the fewest, and that the offspring of the one must be reared and that of the other not, if the flock[*](Cf. on 343 A-B and Politicus 267 B-C, 268 B. αὖ below merely marks the second consideration, harmony, the first being eugenics.) is to be as perfect as possible. And the way in which all this is brought to pass must be unknown to any but the rulers, if, again, the herd of guardians is to be as free as possible from dissension. Most true, he said.

We shall, then, have to ordain certain festivals and sacrifices, in which we shall bring together the brides and the bridegrooms, and our poets must compose hymns suitable to the marriages that then take place. But the number of the marriages we will leave to the discretion of the rulers, that they may keep the number of the citizens as nearly as may be the same,[*](Plato apparently forgets that this legislation applies only to the guardians. The statement that ancient civilization was free from the shadow of Malthusianism requires qualification by this and many other passages. Cf. 372 C and Laws 740 D-E. The ancients in fact took it for granted.) taking into account wars and diseases and all such considerations, and that, so far as possible, our city may not grow too great or too small.Right, he said. Certain ingenious lots, then, I suppose, must be devised so that the inferior man at each conjugation may blame chance and not the rulers. Yes, indeed, he said. And on the young men, surely, who excel in war and other pursuits we must bestow honors and prizes, and, in particular, the opportunity of more frequent intercourse with the women, which will at the same time be a plausible pretext for having them beget as many of the children as possible. Right. And the children thus born will be taken over by the officials appointed for this, men or women or both, since, I take it, the official posts too are common to women and men. The offspring of the good, I suppose, they will take to the pen or créche, to certain nurses who live apart in a quarter of the city, but the offspring of the inferior, and any of those of the other sort who are born defective, they will properly dispose of in secret,[*](Opinions differ whether this is euphemism for exposure. On the frequency or infrequency of this practice cf. Professor La Rue Van Hook’s article in T.A.P.A. vol. li, and that of H. Bolkestein, Class. Phil. vol. xvii. (1922) pp. 222-239.) so that no one will know what has become of them. That is the condition, he said, of preserving the purity of the guardians’ breed. They will also supervise the nursing of the children, conducting the mothers to the pen when their breasts are full, but employing every device[*](Cf. on 414 B and Aristotle Politics 1262 a 14 ff.) to prevent anyone from recognizing her own infant. And they will provide others who have milk if the mothers are insufficient. But they will take care that the mothers themselves shall not suckle too long, and the trouble of wakeful nights and similar burdens they will devolve upon the nurses, wet and dry. You are making maternity a soft job[*](Another favorite idea and expression. Cf. Gorgias 459 C, Laws 648 C, 713 D, 720 C, 779 A, 903 E, Isocrates iv. 36, Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 13. 5.) for the women of the guardians. It ought to be, said I, but let us pursue our design. We said that the offspring should come from parents in their prime. True. Do you agree that the period of the prime may be fairly estimated at twenty years for a woman and thirty for a man? How do you reckon it?[*](Cf. on 458 C.) he said. The women, I said, beginning at the age of twenty, shall bear for the state[*](Half humorous legal language. Cf. Aristotle Politics 1335 b 28 λειτουργεῖν . . . πρὸς τεκνοποιίαν, and Lucan’s urbi pater est, urbique maritus (Phars. ii. 388). The dates for marriage are given a little differently in the Laws, 785 B, 833 C-D, men 30-35, women 16-20. On the whole question and Aristotle’s opinion cf. Newman, Introduction to Aristotle Politics p. 183; cf. also Grube, Class. Quarterly 1927, pp. 95 ff., The Marriage Laws in Plato’s Republic.) to the age of forty, and the man shall beget for the state from the time he passes his prime in swiftness in running to the age of fifty-five.

That is, he said, the maturity and prime for both of body and mind. Then, if anyone older or younger than the prescribed age meddles with procreation for the state, we shall say that his error is an impiety and an injustice, since he is begetting for the city a child whose birth, if it escapes discovery, will not be attended by the sacrifices and the prayers which the priests and priestesses and the entire city prefer at the ceremonial marriages, that ever better offspring may spring from good sires[*](Cf. Horace, Odes iv. 4. 29.) and from fathers helpful to the state sons more helpful still. But this child will be born in darkness and conceived in foul incontinence. Right, he said. And the same rule will apply, I said, if any of those still within the age of procreation goes in to a woman of that age with whom the ruler has not paired him. We shall say that he is imposing on the state a base-born, uncertified, and unhallowed child. Most rightly, he said. But when, I take it, the men and the women have passed the age of lawful procreation, we shall leave the men free to form such relations with whomsoever they please, except[*](Cf. Laws 838 A and 924 E.) daughter and mother and their direct descendants and ascendants, and likewise the women, save with son and father, and so on, first admonishing them preferably not even to bring to light[*](Cf. Newman, op. cit. p. 187.) anything whatever thus conceived, but if they are unable to prevent a birth to dispose of it on the understanding that we cannot rear such an offspring. All that sounds reasonable, he said; but how are they to distinguish one another’s fathers and daughters, and the other degrees of kin that you have just mentioned? They won’t, said I, except that a man will call all male offspring born in the tenth and in the seventh month after he became a bridegroom his sons, and all female, daughters, and they will call him father.[*](Cf. Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology, p. 89: A native of Hawaii, for example, calls by the name of father . . . every man of an age such that he could be his father. Cf. Aristophanes Eccles. 636-637.) And, similarly, he will call their offspring his grandchildren[*](Cf. 363 D and Laws 899 E, 927 B.) and they will call his group grandfathers and grandmothers. And all children born in the period in which their fathers and mothers were procreating will regard one another as brothers and sisters. This will suffice for the prohibitions of intercourse of which we just now spoke. But the law will allow brothers and sisters to cohabit if the lot so falls out and the Delphic oracle approves. Quite right, said he. This, then, Glaucon, is the manner of the community of wives and children among the guardians. That it is consistent with the rest of our polity and by far the best way is the next point that we must get confirmed by the argument. Is not that so?

It is, indeed, he said. Is not the logical first step towards such an agreement to ask ourselves what we could name as the greatest good for the constitution of a state and the proper aim of a lawgiver in his legislation, and what would be the greatest evil, and then to consider whether the proposals we have just set forth fit into the footprints[*](We may perhaps infer from the more explicit reference in Theaetetus 193 C that Plato is thinking of the recognition by footprints in Aeschylus Choeph.205-210.) of the good and do not suit those of the evil? By all means, he said. Do we know of any greater evil for a state than the thing that distracts it and makes it many instead of one, or a greater good than that which binds it together and makes it one? We do not. Is not, then, the community of pleasure and pain the tie that binds, when, so far as may be, all the citizens rejoice and grieve alike at the same births and deaths? By all means, he said. But the individualization of these feelings is a dissolvent, when some grieve exceedingly and others rejoice at the same happenings to the city and its inhabitants? Of course. And the chief cause of this is when the citizens do not utter in unison such words as mine and not mine, and similarly with regard to the word alien?[*](Cf. 423 B, Aristotle Politics 1261 b 16 ff., Plato’s Laws and the Unity of Plato’s Thought, Class. Phil. ix. (1914) p. 358, Laws 664 A, 739 C-E, Julian (Teubner) ii. 459, Teichmüller, Lit. Fehden, vol. i. p. 19, Mill, Utilitarianism, iii. 345: In an improving state of the human mind the influences are constantly on the increase which tend to generate in each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest, which, if perfect, would make him never think of or desire any beneficial condition for himself in the benefits of which they are not included; Spinoza, paraphrased by Hoffding, Hist. of Mod. Phil. i. p. 325: It would be best, since they seek a common good, if all could be like one mind and one body. Rabelais I. lvii. parodies Plato: Si quelqu’un ou quelqu’une disoit beuvons, tous beuvoient etc. Aristotle’s criticism, though using some of Plato’s phrases, does not mention his name at this point but speaks of τίνες, Politics 1261 b 7.)Precisely so. That city, then, is best ordered in which the greatest number use the expression mine and not mine of the same things in the same way. Much the best. And the city whose state is most like that of an individual man.[*](Cf. Laws 829 A.) For example, if the finger of one of us is wounded, the entire community of bodily connections stretching to the soul for integration[*](I so translate to bring out the analogy between Plato and e.g. Sherrington. For to the soul Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, n. 328, Laws 673 A, Timaeus 45 D, 584 C, Philebus 33, 34, 43 B-C. Poschenrieder, Die Platonischen Dialoge in ihrem Verhältnisse zu den Hippocratischen Schriften, p. 67, compares the De locis in homine, vi. p. 278 Littré.) with the dominant part is made aware, and all of it feels the pain as a whole, though it is a part that suffers, and that is how we come to say that the man has a pain in his finger. And for any other member of the man the same statement holds, alike for a part that labors in pain or is eased by pleasure. The same, he said, and, to return to your question, the best governed state most nearly resembles such an organism. That is the kind of a state, then, I presume, that, when anyone of the citizens suffers aught of good or evil, will be most likely to speak of the part that suffers as its own and will share the pleasure or the pain as a whole. Inevitably, he said, if it is well governed. It is time, I said, to return to our city and observe whether it, rather than any other, embodies the qualities agreed upon in our argument.[*](For these further confirmations of an established thesis cf. on 442-443.) We must, he said.

Well, then, there are to be found in other cities rulers and the people as in it, are there not?There are.Will not all these address one another as fellow-citizens?Of course.But in addition to citizens, what does the people in other states call its rulers.In most cities, masters. In democratic cities, just this, rulers.But what of the people in our city. In addition to citizens, what do they call their rulers?Saviors and helpers, he said. And what term do these apply to the people? Payers of their wage and supporters. And how do the rulers in other states denominate the populace? Slaves, he said. And how do the rulers describe one another? Co-rulers, he said. And ours? Co-guardians. Can you tell me whether any of the rulers in other states would speak of some of their co-rulers as belonging and others as outsiders? Yes, many would. And such a one thinks and speaks of the one that belongs as his own, doesn’t he, and of the outsider as not his own? That is so. But what of your guardians. Could any of them think or speak of his co-guardian as an outsider? By no means, he said; for no matter whom he meets, he will feel that he is meeting a brother, a sister, a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, or the offspring or forebears of these. Excellent, said I; but tell me this further, will it be merely the names[*](τὰ ὀνόματα μόνον may be thought to anticipate Aristotle’s objections.) of this kinship that you have prescribed for them or must all their actions conform to the names in all customary observance toward fathers and in awe and care and obedience for parents, if they look for the favor[*](Cf. 554 D ὅτι οὐκ ἄμεινον.) of either gods or men, since any other behaviour would be neither just nor pious? Shall these be the unanimous oracular voices that they hear from all the people, or shall some other kind of teaching beset[*](Cf. the reliance on a unanimous public opinion in the Laws, 838 C-D.) the ears of your children from their birth, both concerning[*](περὶ . . . περί: for the preposition repeated in a different sense cf. Isocrates iv. 34, ix, 3, and Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, III. i. As here by Caesar and by you cut off.) what is due to those who are pointed out as their fathers and to their other kin? These, he said; for it would be absurd for them merely to pronounce with their lips the names of kinship without the deeds. Then, in this city more than in any other, when one citizen fares well or ill, men will pronounce in unison the word of which we spoke: It is mine that does well; it is mine that does ill. That is most true, he said.

And did we not say that this conviction and way of speech[*](δόγματός τε καὶ ῥήματος: Cf. Sophist 265 C, Laws 797 C.) 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,[*](Cf. 416-417.) 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,[*](For a similar list Cf. Laws 842 D. Aristotle, Politics 1263 b 20 f., objects that it is not lack of unity but wickedness that causes these evils.) one may say,[*](Softens the strong word οἰχήσεται.) 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[*](Cf. A.J.P. vol. xiii. p. 364, Aeschines iii. 255, Xenophon Rep. Lac. 4. 5, Laws 880 A.) we shall say that self-defence is honorable and just, thereby compelling them to keep their bodies in condition. Right, he said.

And there will be the further advantage in such a law that an angry man, satisfying his anger in such wise, would be less likely to carry the quarrel to further extremes.Assuredly.As for an older man, he will always have the charge of ruling and chastising the younger.Obviously.Again, it is plain that the young man, except by command of the rulers, will probably not do violence to an elder or strike him, or, I take it, dishonor him in any other way. Two guardians sufficient to prevent that there are, fear and awe, awe restraining him from laying hands on one who may be his parent, and fear in that the others will rush to the aid of the sufferer, some as sons, some as brothers, some as fathers.That is the way it works out, he said. Then in all cases the laws will leave these men to dwell in peace together. Great peace. And if these are free from dissensions among themselves, there is no fear that[*](One of the profoundest of Plato’s political aphorisms. Cf. on 545 D, Laws 683 E, and Aristotle Politics 1305 a 39.) the rest of the city will ever start faction against them or with one another. No, there is not. But I hesitate, so unseemly[*](Alma sdegnosa. Cf. 371 E, 396 B, 397 D, 525 D.) are they, even to mention the pettiest troubles of which they would be rid, the flatterings[*](Cf. Aristotle Politics 1263 b 22.) of the rich, the embarrassments and pains of the poor in the bringing-up of their children and the procuring of money for the necessities of life for their households, the borrowings, the repudiations, all the devices with which they acquire what they deposit with wives and servitors to husband,[*](Cf. 416 D, 548 A, 550 D.) and all the indignities that they endure in such matters, which are obvious and ignoble and not deserving of mention. Even a blind[*](Proverbial. Cf. Sophist 241 D.) man can see these, he said. From all these, then, they will be finally free, and they will live a happier life than that men count most happy, the life of the victors at Olympia.[*](Cf. 540B-C, 621D, Laws 715C, 807C, 840A, 946-947, 964C, Cicero Pro Flacco 31 Olympionicen esse apud Graecos prope maius et gloriosius est quam Romae trimphasse. The motive is anticipated or parodied by Dracontion, Athenaeus 237 D, where the parasite boasts—γέρα γὰρ αὐτοῖς ταῦτα τοῖς τἀλύμπιανικῶσι δέδοται χρηστότητος οὕνεκα.) How so? The things for which those are felicitated are a small part of what is secured for these. Their victory is fairer and their public support more complete. For the prize of victory that they win is the salvation of the entire state, the fillet that binds their brows is the public support of themselves and their children— they receive honor from the city while they live and when they die a worthy burial. A fair guerdon, indeed, he said.