always be employed in the same calling. But as it is evidently better,
that these should continue to exercise their respective trades; so also
in civil society, where it is possible, it would be better that the
government should continue in the same hands; but where it [1261b] is
not (as nature has made all men equal, and therefore it is just, be the
administration good or bad, that all should partake of it), there it is
best to observe a rotation, and let those who are their equals by turns
submit to those who are at that time magistrates, as they will, in their
turns, alternately be governors and governed, as if they were different
men: by the same method different persons will execute different
offices. From hence it is evident, that a city cannot be one in the
manner that some persons propose; and that what has been said to be the
greatest good which it could enjoy, is absolutely its destruction, which
cannot be: for the good of anything is that which preserves it.
For another reaton also it is clear, that it is not for the best
to endeavour to make a city too much one, because a family is more
sufficient in itself than a single person, a city than a family; and
indeed Plato supposes that a city owes its existence to that sufficiency
in themselves which the members of it enjoy. If then this sufficiency is
so desirable, the less the city is one the better.

CHAPTER III

But admitting that it is most advantageous for a city to be one as much
as possible, it does not seem to follow that this will take place by
permitting all at once to say this is mine, and this is not mine (though
this is what Socrates regards as a proof that a city is entirely one),
for the word All is used in two senses; if it means each individual,
what Socrates proposes will nearly take place; for each person will
say, this is his own son, and his own wife, and his own property, and
of everything else that may happen to belong to him, that it is his own.
But those who have their wives and children in common will not say so,
but all will say so, though not as individuals; therefore, to use the
word all is evidently a fallacious mode of speech; for this word is
sometimes used distributively, and sometimes collectively, on account
of its double meaning, and is the cause of inconclusive syllogisms in
reasoning. Therefore for all persons to say the same thing was their
own, using the word all in its distributive sense, would be well, but is
im