The Republic
suckling shall not be protracted too long; and the mothers will have no
getting up at night or other trouble, but will hand over all this sort
of thing to the nurses and attendants.
You suppose the wives of our guardians to have a fine easy time of it
when they are having children.
Why, said I, and so they ought. Let us, however, proceed with our
scheme. We were saying that the parents should be in the prime of life?
Very true.
And what is the prime of life? May it not be defined as a period of
about twenty years in a woman’s life, and thirty in a man’s?
Which years do you mean to include?
A woman, I said, at twenty years of age may begin to bear children to
the State, and continue to bear them until forty; a man may begin at
five-and-twenty, when he has passed the point at which the pulse of
life beats quickest, and continue to beget children until he be
fifty-five.
Certainly, he said, both in men and women those years are the prime of
physical as well as of intellectual vigour.
Any one above or below the prescribed ages who takes part in the public
hymeneals shall be said to have done an unholy and unrighteous thing;
the child of which he is the father, if it steals into life, will have
been conceived under auspices very unlike the sacrifices and prayers,
which at each hymeneal priestesses and priest and the whole city will
offer, that the new generation may be better and more useful than their
good and useful parents, whereas his child will be the offspring of
darkness and strange lust.
Very true, he replied.
And the same law will apply to any one of those within the prescribed
age who forms a connection with any woman in the prime of life without
the sanction of the rulers; for we shall say that he is raising up a
bastard to the State, uncertified and unconsecrated.
Very true, he replied.
This applies, however, only to those who are within the specified age:
after that we allow them to range at will, except that a man may not
marry his daughter or his daughter’s daughter, or his mother or his
mother’s mother; and women, on the other hand, are prohibited from
marrying their sons or fathers, or son’s son or father’s father, and so
on in either direction. And we grant all this, accompanying the
permission with strict orders to prevent any embryo which may come into
being from seeing the light; and if any force a way to the birth, the
parents must understand that the offspring of such an union cannot be
maintained, and arrange accordingly.
That also, he said, is a reasonable proposition. But how will they know
who are fathers and daughters, and so on?
They will never know. The way will be this:—dating from the day of the
hymeneal, the bridegroom who was then married will call all the male
children who are born in the seventh and tenth month afterwards his
sons, and the female children his daughters, and they will call him
father, and he will call their children his grandchildren, and they
will call the elder generation grandfathers and grandmothers. All who
were begotten at the time when their fathers and mothers came together
will be called their brothers and sisters, and these, as I was saying,
will be forbidden to inter-marry. This, however, is not to be
understood as an absolute prohibition of the marriage of brothers and
sisters; if the lot favours them, and they receive the sanction of the
Pythian oracle, the law will allow them.
Quite right, he replied.
Such is the scheme, Glaucon, according to which the guardians of our
State are to have their wives and families in common. And now you would
have the argument show that this community is consistent with the rest
of our polity, and also that nothing can be better—would you not?
Yes, certainly.
Shall we try to find a common basis by asking of ourselves what ought
to be the chief aim of the legislator in making laws and in the
organization of a State,—what is the greatest good, and what is the
greatest evil, and then consider whether our previous description has
the stamp of the good or of the evil?
By all means.
Can there be any greater evil than discord and distraction and
plurality where unity ought to reign? or any greater good than the bond
of unity?
There cannot.
And there is unity where there is community of pleasures and
pains—where all the citizens are glad or grieved on the same occasions
of joy and sorrow?
No doubt.
Yes; and where there is no common but only private feeling a State is
disorganized—when you have one half of the world triumphing and the
other plunged in grief at the same events happening to the city or the
citizens?
Certainly.
Such differences commonly originate in a disagreement about the use of
the terms ‘mine’ and ‘not mine,’ ‘his’ and ‘not his.’
Exactly so.
And is not that the best-ordered State in which the greatest number of
persons apply the terms ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ in the same way to the
same thing?
Quite true.
Or that again which most nearly approaches to the condition of the
individual—as in the body, when but a finger of one of us is hurt, the
whole frame, drawn towards the soul as a centre and forming one kingdom
under the ruling power therein, feels the hurt and sympathizes all
together with the part affected, and we say that the man has a pain in
his finger; and the same expression is used about any other part of the
body, which has a sensation of pain at suffering or of pleasure at the
alleviation of suffering.
Very true, he replied; and I agree with you that in the best-ordered
State there is the nearest approach to this common feeling which you
describe.
Then when any one of the citizens experiences any good or evil, the
whole State will make his case their own, and will either rejoice or
sorrow with him?
Yes, he said, that is what will happen in a well-ordered State.
It will now be time, I said, for us to return to our State and see
whether this or some other form is most in accordance with these
fundamental principles.
Very good.
Our State like every other has rulers and subjects?
True.
All of whom will call one another citizens?
Of course.
But is there not another name which people give to their rulers in
other States?
Generally they call them masters, but in democratic States they simply
call them rulers.
And in our State what other name besides that of citizens do the people
give the rulers?
They are called saviours and helpers, he replied.
And what do the rulers call the people?
Their maintainers and foster-fathers.
And what do they call them in other States?
Slaves.
And what do the rulers call one another in other States?
Fellow-rulers.
And what in ours?
Fellow-guardians.
Did you ever know an example in any other State of a ruler who would
speak of one of his colleagues as his friend and of another as not
being his friend?
Yes, very often.
And the friend he regards and describes as one in whom he has an
interest, and the other as a stranger in whom he has no interest?
Exactly.
But would any of your guardians think or speak of any other guardian as
a stranger?
Certainly he would not; for every one whom they meet will be regarded
by them either as a brother or sister, or father or mother, or son or
daughter, or as the child or parent of those who are thus connected
with him.
Capital, I said; but let me ask you once more: Shall they be a family
in name only; or shall they in all their actions be true to the name?
For example, in the use of the word ‘father,’ would the care of a
father be implied and the filial reverence and duty and obedience to
him which the law commands; and is the violator of these duties to be
regarded as an impious and unrighteous person who is not likely to
receive much good either at the hands of God or of man? Are these to be
or not to be the strains which the children will hear repeated in their
ears by all the citizens about those who are intimated to them to be
their parents and the rest of their kinsfolk?
These, he said, and none other; for what can be more ridiculous than
for them to utter the names of family ties with the lips only and not
to act in the spirit of them?
Then in our city the language of harmony and concord will be more often
heard than in any other. As I was describing before, when any one is
well or ill, the universal word will be ‘with me it is well’ or ‘it is
ill.’
Most true.
And agreeably to this mode of thinking and speaking, were we not saying
that they will have their pleasures and pains in common?
Yes, and so they will.
And they will have a common interest in the same thing which they will
alike call ‘my own,’ and having this common interest they will have a
common feeling of pleasure and pain?
Yes, far more so than in other States.
And the reason of this, over and above the general constitution of the
State, will be that the guardians will have a community of women and
children?
That will be the chief reason.
And this unity of feeling we admitted to be the greatest good, as was
implied in our own comparison of a well-ordered State to the relation
of the body and the members, when affected by pleasure or pain?
That we acknowledged, and very rightly.
Then the community of wives and children among our citizens is clearly
the source of the greatest good to the State?
Certainly.
And this agrees with the other principle which we were affirming,—that
the guardians were not to have houses or lands or any other property;
their pay was to be their food, which they were to receive from the
other citizens, and they were to have no private expenses; for we
intended them to preserve their true character of guardians.
Right, he replied.
Both the community of property and the community of families, as I am
saying, tend to make them more truly guardians; they will not tear the
city in pieces by differing about ‘mine’ and ‘not mine;’ each man
dragging any acquisition which he has made into a separate house of his
own, where he has a separate wife and children and private pleasures
and pains; but all will be affected as far as may be by the same
pleasures and pains because they are all of one opinion about what is
near and dear to them, and therefore they all tend towards a common
end.
Certainly, he replied.
And as they have nothing but their persons which they can call their
own, suits and complaints will have no existence among them; they will
be delivered from all those quarrels of which money or children or
relations are the occasion.
Of course they will.
Neither will trials for assault or insult ever be likely to occur among
them. For that equals should defend themselves against equals we shall
maintain to be honourable and right; we shall make the protection of
the person a matter of necessity.
That is good, he said.
Yes; and there is a further good in the law; viz. that if a man has a
quarrel with another he will satisfy his resentment then and there, and
not proceed to more dangerous lengths.
Certainly.
To the elder shall be assigned the duty of ruling and chastising the
younger.
Clearly.
Nor can there be a doubt that the younger will not strike or do any
other violence to an elder, unless the magistrates command him; nor
will he slight him in any way. For there are two guardians, shame and
fear, mighty to prevent him: shame, which makes men refrain from laying
hands on those who are to them in the relation of parents; fear, that
the injured one will be succoured by the others who are his brothers,
sons, fathers.
That is true, he replied.
Then in every way the laws will help the citizens to keep the peace
with one another?
Yes, there will be no want of peace.
And as the guardians will never quarrel among themselves there will be