[462]
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
1
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
462b
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
462c
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?
2
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.
3
For example, if the finger of one of us is wounded, the entire community of bodily connections stretching to the soul for
integration
4
462d
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,
462e
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. 5 We must, he said.
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. 5 We must, he said.
Republic. Plato. Paul Shorey (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1935-37.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.