love
born of eager desire is not known among them; only that born of
friendship.

Domestic affairs and partnerships are of little account, because,
excepting the sign of honour, each one receives what he is in need of.
To the heroes and heroines of the republic, it is customary to give the
pleasing gifts of honour, beautiful wreaths, sweet food or splendid
clothes, while they are feasting. In the daytime all use white garments
within the city, but at night or outside the city they use red garments
either of wool or silk. They hate black as they do dung, and therefore
they dislike the Japanese, who are fond of black. Pride they consider
the most execrable vice, and one who acts proudly is chastised with the
most ruthless correction. Wherefore no one thinks it lowering to wait at
table or to work in the kitchen or fields. All work they call
discipline, and thus they say that it is honourable to go on foot, to do
any act of nature, to see with the eye, and to speak with the tongue;
and when there is need, they distinguish philosophically between tears
and spittle.

Every man who, when he is told off to work, does his duty, is considered
very honourable. It is not the custom to keep slaves. For they are
enough, and more than enough, for themselves. But with us, alas! it is
not so. In Naples there exists seventy thousand souls, and out of these
scarcely ten or fifteen thousand do any work, and they are always lean
from overwork and are getting weaker every day. The rest become a prey
to idleness, avarice, ill-health, lasciviousness, usury and other vices,
and contaminate and corrupt very many families by holding them in
servitude for their own use, by keeping them in poverty and slavishness,
and by imparting to them their own vices. Therefore public slavery ruins
them; useful works, in the field, in military service and in arts,
except those which are debasing, are not cultivated, the few who do
practise them doing so with much aversion. But in the City of the Sun,
while duty and work is distributed among all, it only falls to each one
to work for about four hours every day. The remaining hours are spent in
learning joyously, in debating, in reading, in reciting, in writing, in
walking, in exercising the mind and body, and with play. They allow no
game which is played while sitting, neither the single die nor dice, nor
chess, nor others like these. But they play with the ball, with the
sack, with the hoop, with wrestling,