and mothers came together
will be called their brothers and sisters, and these, as I was saying,
will be forbidden to inter-marry. This, however, is not to be
understood as an absolute prohibition of the marriage of brothers and
sisters; if the lot favours them, and they receive the sanction of the
Pythian oracle, the law will allow them.

Quite right, he replied.

Such is the scheme, Glaucon, according to which the guardians of our
State are to have their wives and families in common. And now you
would have the argument show that this community is consistent with the
rest of our polity, and also that nothing can be better--would you not?

Yes, certainly.

Shall we try to find a common basis by asking of ourselves what ought
to be the chief aim of the legislator in making laws and in the
organization of a State,--what is the greatest I good, and what is the
greatest evil, and then consider whether our previous description has
the stamp of the good or of the evil?

By all means.

Can there be any greater evil than discord and distraction and
plurality where unity ought to reign? or any greater good than the bond
of unity?

There cannot.

And there is unity where there is community of pleasures and
pains--where all the citizens are glad or grieved on the same occasions
of joy and sorrow?

No doubt.

Yes; and where there is no common but only private feeling a State is
disorganized--when you have one half of the world triumphing and the
other plunged in grief at the same events happening to the city or the
citizens?

Certainly.

Such differences commonly originate in a disagreement about the use of
the terms 'mine' and 'not mine,' 'his' and 'not his.'

Exactly so.

And is not that the best-ordered State in which the greatest number of
persons apply the terms 'mine' and 'not mine' in the same way to the
same thing?

Quite true.

Or that again which most nearly approaches to the condition of the
individual--as in the body, when but a finger of one of us is hurt, the
whole frame, drawn towards the soul as a center and forming one kingdom
under the ruling power therein, feels the hurt and sympathizes all
together with the part affected, and we say that the man has a pain in
his finger; and the same expression is used about any other part of the
body, which has a sensation of pain at suffering or of pleasure at the
alleviation of suffering.

Very true, he replied; and I agree with you that in the bes