and sister, is of no consequence at all. It seems also more
advantageous for the state, that the husbandmen should have their
wives and children in common than the military, for there will be less
affection [1262b] among them in that case than when otherwise; for
such persons ought to be under subjection, that they may obey the
laws, and not seek after innovations. Upon the whole, the consequences
of such a law as this would be directly contrary to those things which
good laws ought to establish, and which Socrates endeavoured to
establish by his regulations concerning women and children: for we
think that friendship is the greatest good which can happen to any
city, as nothing so much prevents seditions: and amity in a city is
what Socrates commends above all things, which appears to be, as
indeed he says, the effect of friendship; as we learn from
Aristophanes in the Erotics, who says, that those who love one another
from the excess of that passion, desire to breathe the same soul, and
from being two to be blended into one: from whence it would
necessarily follow, that both or one of them must be destroyed. But
now in a city which admits of this community, the tie of friendship
must, from that very cause, be extremely weak, when no father can say,
this is my son; or son, this is my father; for as a very little of
what is sweet, being mixed with a great deal of water is imperceptible
after the mixture, so must all family connections, and the names they
go by, be necessarily disregarded in such a community, it being then
by no means necessary that the father should have any regard for him
he called a son, or the brothers for those they call brothers. There
are two things which principally inspire mankind with care and love of
their offspring, knowing it is their own, and what ought to be the
object of their affection, neither of which can take place in this
sort of community. As for exchanging the children of the artificers
and husbandmen with those of the military, and theirs reciprocally