poused, and every
one will have many children and every child many parents.

Socrates proceeds: I have now to prove that this scheme is advantageous
and also consistent with our entire polity. The greatest good of a State
is unity; the greatest evil, discord and distraction. And there will be
unity where there are no private pleasures or pains or interests--where
if one member suffers all the members suffer, if one citizen is touched
all are quickly sensitive; and the least hurt to the little finger of
the State runs through the whole body and vibrates to the soul. For the
true State, like an individual, is injured as a whole when any part is
affected. Every State has subjects and rulers, who in a democracy are
called rulers, and in other States masters: but in our State they are
called saviours and allies; and the subjects who in other States are
termed slaves, are by us termed nurturers and paymasters, and those who
are termed comrades and colleagues in other places, are by us called
fathers and brothers. And whereas in other States members of the same
government regard one of their colleagues as a friend and another as an
enemy, in our State no man is a stranger to another; for every citizen
is connected with every other by ties of blood, and these names and
this way of speaking will have a corresponding reality--brother, father,
sister, mother, repeated from infancy in the ears of children, will not
be mere words. Then again the citizens will have all things in common,
in having common property they will have common pleasures and pains.

Can there be strife and contention among those who are of one mind; or
lawsuits about property when men have nothing but their bodies which
they call their own; or suits about violence when every one is bound
to defend himself? The permission to strike when insulted will be an
'antidote' to the knife and will prevent disturbances in the State. But
no younger man will strike an elder; reverence will prevent him from
laying hands on his kindred, and he will fear that the rest of the
family may retaliate. Moreover, our citizens will be rid of the
lesser evils of life; there will be no flattery of the rich, no sordid
household cares, no borrowing and not paying. Compared with the
citizens of other States, ours will be Olympic victors, and crowned
with blessings greater still--they and their children having a better
maintenance during life, and after death an honourable burial. Nor has