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 Footnote 1We 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
Footnote 2Cf. 423 B, Aristotle Politics 1261 b 16 ff., mine
and not mine,
and similarly with regard to the word alien
?Plato’s Laws and the Unity of Plato’s Thought,
Class. Phil. ix. () 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
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. beuvons,
tous beuvoientPrecisely 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. Footnote 3Cf. 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
Footnote 4I 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. Footnote 5For these further confirmations of an established thesis cf. on 442-443.
We must,
he said.
Book 5