Plato, Republic

[458a] Permit me to take a holiday, just as men of lazy minds are wont to feast themselves on their own thoughts when they walk alone.¹ Such persons, without waiting to discover how their desires may be realized, dismiss that topic to save themselves the labor of deliberating about possibilities and impossibilities, assume their wish fulfilled, and proceed to work out the details in imagination, and take pleasure in portraying what they will do when it is realized, thus making still more idle a mind that is idle without that.² I too now succumb to this weakness³ [458b] and desire to postpone⁴ and examine later the question of feasibility, but will at present assume that, and will, with your permission, inquire how the rulers will work out the details in practice, and try to show that nothing could be more beneficial to the state and its guardians than the effective operation of our plan. This is what I would try to consider first together with you, and thereafter the other topic, if you allow it.” “I do allow it,” he said: “proceed with the inquiry.” “I think, then,” said I, “that the rulers, [458c] if they are to deserve that name, and their helpers likewise, will, the one, be willing to accept orders,⁵ and the other, to give them, in some things obeying our laws, and imitating⁶ them in others which we leave to their discretion.” “Presumably.” “You, then, the lawgiver,” I said, “have picked these men and similarly will select to give over to them women as nearly as possible of the same nature.⁷ And they, having houses and meals in common, and no private possessions of that kind, [458d] will dwell together, and being commingled in gymnastics and in all their life and education, will be conducted by innate necessity to sexual union. Is not what I say a necessary consequence?” “Not by the necessities of geometry,” he said, “but by those of love,⁸ which are perhaps keener and more potent than the other to persuade and constrain the multitude.”

“They are, indeed,” I said; “but next, Glaucon, disorder and promiscuity in these unions or [458e] in anything else they do would be an unhallowed thing in a happy state and the rulers will not suffer it.” “It would not be right,” he said. “Obviously, then, we must arrange marriages, sacramental so far as may be. And the most sacred marriages would be those that were most beneficial.”