But all this legislation ends only in forbidding
agriculture to the guardians, a prohibition which the Lacedaemonians
try to enforce already.
But, indeed, Socrates has not said, nor is it easy to decide, what
in such a community will be the general form of the state. The
citizens who are not guardians are the majority, and about them
nothing has been determined: are the husbandmen, too, to have their
property in common? Or is each individual to have his own? And are the
wives and children to be individual or common. If, like the guardians,
they are to have all things in common, what do they differ from
them, or what will they gain by submitting to their government? Or,
upon what principle would they submit, unless indeed the governing
class adopt the ingenious policy of the Cretans, who give their slaves
the same institutions as their own, but forbid them gymnastic
exercises and the possession of arms. If, on the other hand, the
inferior classes are to be like other cities in respect of marriage
and property, what will be the form of the community? Must it not
contain two states in one, each hostile to the other He makes the
guardians into a mere occupying garrison, while the husbandmen and
artisans and the rest are the real citizens. But if so the suits and
quarrels, and all the evils which Socrates affirms to exist in other
states, will exist equally among them.
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