Which is better, our present condition, or the
proposed new order of society.
II
There are many difficulties in the community of women. And the
principle on which Socrates rests the necessity of such an institution
evidently is not established by his arguments. Further, as a means
to the end which he ascribes to the state, the scheme, taken literally
is impracticable, and how we are to interpret it is nowhere
precisely stated. I am speaking of the premise from which the argument
of Socrates proceeds, 'that the greater the unity of the state the
better.' Is it not obvious that a state may at length attain such a
degree of unity as to be no longer a state? since the nature of a
state is to be a plurality, and in tending to greater unity, from
being a state, it becomes a family, and from being a family, an
individual; for the family may be said to be more than the state,
and the individual than the family. So that we ought not to attain
this greatest unity even if we could, for it would be the
destruction of the state. Again, a state is not made up only of so
many men, but of different kinds of men; for similars do not
constitute a state. It is not like a military alliance The
usefulness of the latter depends upon its quantity even where there is
no difference in quality (for mutual protection is the end aimed
at), just as a greater weight of anything is more useful than a less
(in like manner, a state differs from a nation, when the nation has
not its population organized in villages, but lives an Arcadian sort
of life); but the elements out of which a unity is to be formed differ
in kind.
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