[373e]
disregarding the limit set by our
necessary wants.” “Inevitably, Socrates.”
“We shall go to war1 as the next step, Glaucon—or what will
happen?” “What you say,” he said.
“And we are not yet to speak,” said I, “of any
evil or good effect of war, but only to affirm that we have further2 discovered the origin of war, namely, from those things from
which3 the
greatest disasters, public and private, come to states when they
come.” “Certainly.” “Then, my
friend, we must still further enlarge our city
1 The unnecessary desires are the ultimate causes of wars.Phaedo 66 C. The simple life once abandoned, war is inevitable. “My lord,” said St. Francis to the Bishop of Assisi, “if we possessed property we should have need of arms for its defense” (Sabatier, p. 81). Similarly that very dissimilar thinker, Mandeville. Cf. on 372 C. Plato recognizes the struggle for existence (Spencer, Data of Ethics, 6), and the “bellum omnium contra omnes,”Laws 625 E. Cf. Sidgwick, Method of Ethics, i, 2: “The Republic of Plato seems in many respects divergent from the reality. And yet he contemplates war as a permanent, unalterable fact to be provided for in the ideal state.” Spencer on the contrary contemplates a completely evolved society in which the ethics of militarism will disappear.
2 i.e. as well as the genesis of society. 369 B.
3 ἐξ ὧν: i.e.ἐκ τούτων ἐξ ὧν, namely the appetites and the love of money.
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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