[462a]
by the argument. Is not that
so?” “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 footprints1 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
[462b]
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
[462c]
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
‘mine’ and ‘not mine,’ and similarly
with regard to the word ‘alien’?”2“Precisely
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.3 For example, if the
finger of one of us is wounded, the entire community of bodily connections
stretching to the soul for ‘integration’4
[462d]
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,
[462e]
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.5”
“We must,” he said. “Well, then,
1 We 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.
2 Cf. 423 B, Aristotle Politics 1261 b 16 ff., “Plato's Laws and the Unity of Plato's Thought,”Class. Phil. ix. (1914) 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 'beuvons,' tous beuvoient” 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.
3 Cf. Laws 829 A.
4 I 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.
5 For these further confirmations of an established thesis cf. on 442-443.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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