[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’?”1“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.2 For example, if the
finger of one of us is wounded, the entire community of bodily connections
stretching to the soul for ‘integration’3
1 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.
2 Cf. Laws 829 A.
3 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.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.