Complete Works (298 page)

We should not forget that we are in the same fortunate position as the Heraclids when they founded their colony: we noticed
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how they avoided vicious and dangerous disputes about land and cancellations of debts and distribution of property. When an old-established state is forced to resort [d] to legislation to deal with these problems, it finds that both leaving things as they are and reforming them are somehow equally impossible. The only policy left them is to mouth pious hopes and make a little cautious progress over a long period by advancing a step at a time. (This is the way it can be done. From time to time some of the reformers should be themselves great land-owners and have a large number of debtors; and they should be prepared, in a philanthropic spirit, to share their prosperity with those debtors who are in distress, partly by remitting debts and partly by making [e] land available for distribution. Their policy will be a policy of moderation, dictated by the conviction that poverty is a matter of increased greed rather than diminished wealth. This belief is fundamental to the success of a state, and is the firm base on which you can later build whatever political
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structure is appropriate to such conditions as we have described. But when these first steps towards reform falter, subsequent constitutional action in any state will be hard going.) Now as we say, such difficulties do not affect us. Nevertheless, it’s better to have explained how we could have escaped them if they had. Let’s take it, then, that the explanation has been given: the way to escape those difficulties is through a sense of justice [b] combined with an indifference to wealth; there is no other route, broad or narrow, by which we can avoid them. So let’s adopt this principle as a prop for our state. Somehow or other we must ensure that the citizens’ property does not lead to disputes among them—otherwise, if people have longstanding complaints against each other, anyone with any sense at all will not go any further with organizing them, if he can help it. But when, as with us now, God has given a group of people a new state to found, in which so far there is no mutual malice—well, to stir up ill-will towards each other because of the way they distribute the land and houses would be so criminally stupid that no man could bring himself to do it.

[c] So what’s the correct method of distribution? First, one has to determine what the total number of people ought to be, then agree on the question of the distribution of the citizens and decide the number and size of the subsections into which they ought to be divided; and the land and houses must be divided equally (so far as possible) among these subsections. A [d] suitable total for the number of citizens cannot be fixed without considering the land and the neighboring states. The land must be extensive enough to support a given number of people
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in modest comfort, and not a foot more is needed. The inhabitants should be numerous enough to be able to defend themselves when the adjacent peoples attack them, and contribute at any rate some assistance to neighboring societies when they are wronged. When we have inspected the land and its neighbors, we’ll determine these points and give reasons for the action we take; but for the moment let’s just give an outline sketch and get on with finishing our legislation.

Let’s assume we have the convenient number of five thousand and forty [e] farmers and protectors of their holdings, and let the land with its houses be divided up into the same number of parts, so that a man and his holding always go together. Divide the total first by two, then by three: you’ll see it can be divided by four and five and every number right up to ten. Everyone who legislates should have sufficient appreciation of arithmetic to know what number will be most use in every state, and why. So let’s
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fix on the one which has the largest number of consecutive divisors. Of course, an infinite series of numbers would admit all possible divisions for all possible uses, but our 5040 admits no more than 59 (including 1 to 10 without a break), which will have to suffice for purposes of war and every peacetime activity, all contracts and dealings, and for taxes and [b] grants.

Anyone who is legally obliged to understand these mathematical facts should try to deepen his understanding of them even in his spare time. They really are just as I say, and the founder of a state needs to be told of them, for the following reasons. It doesn’t matter whether he’s founding a new state from scratch or reconstructing an old one that has gone to ruin: in either case, if he has any sense, he will never dream of altering whatever instructions may have been received from Delphi or Dodona or [c] Ammon
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about the gods and temples that ought to be founded by the various groups in the state, and the gods or spirits after whom the temples should be named. (Alternatively, such details may have been suggested by stories told long ago of visions or divine inspiration, which somehow moved people to institute sacrifices with their rituals—either native or taken from Etruria or Cyprus or some other country—so that on the strength of these reports they consecrated statues, altars, temples and sites of oracles, providing each with its own sacred plot of land.) The legislator [d] must not tamper with any of this in the slightest detail. He must allocate to each division of citizens a god or spirit or perhaps a hero, and when he divides up the territory he must give these priority by setting aside plots of land for them, endowed with all the appropriate resources. Thus when the different divisions gather together at fixed times they will have an opportunity of satisfying their various needs, and the citizens will [e] recognize and greet each other at the sacrifices in mutual friendship—and there can be no greater benefit for a state than that the citizens should be well-known one to another. Where they have no insight into each other’s characters and are kept in the dark about them, no one will ever enjoy the respect he merits or fill the office he deserves or obtain the legal verdict to which he is entitled. So every citizen of every state should make a particular effort to show that he is straightforward and genuine, not shifty, and try to avoid being hoodwinked by anyone who is.

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The next move in this game of legislation is as unusual as going ‘across the line’ in checkers, and may well cause surprise at first hearing. But reflection and experience will soon show that the organization of a state is almost bound to fall short of the ideal. You may, perhaps—if you don’t know what it means to be a legislator without dictatorial powers—refuse to countenance such a state; nevertheless the right procedure is to describe not only the ideal society but the second and third best too, and then leave [b] it to anyone in charge of founding a community to make a choice between them. So let’s follow this procedure now: let’s describe the absolutely ideal society, then the second-best, then the third. On this occasion we ought to leave the choice to Clinias, but we should not forget anyone else who may at some time be faced with such a choice and wish to adopt for his own purposes customs of his native country which he finds valuable.

[c] You’ll find the ideal society and state, and the best code of laws, where the old saying ‘friends’ property is genuinely shared’ is put into practice as widely as possible throughout the entire state. Now I don’t know whether in fact this situation—a community of wives, children and all property—exists anywhere today, or will ever exist, but at any rate in such a state the notion of ‘private property’ will have been by hook or by crook completely eliminated from life. Everything possible will have been done to throw into a sort of common pool even what is by nature ‘my own’, [d] like eyes and ears and hands, in the sense that to judge by appearances they all see and hear and act in concert. Everybody feels pleasure and pain at the same things, so that they all praise and blame with complete unanimity. To sum up, the laws in force impose the greatest possible unity on the state—and you’ll never produce a better or truer criterion of an absolutely perfect law than that. It may be that gods or a number of the children of gods inhabit this kind of state: if so, the life they live there, [e] observing these rules, is a happy one indeed. And so men need look no further for their ideal: they should keep this state in view and try to find the one that most nearly resembles it. This is what we’ve put our hand to, and if in some way it could be realized, it would come very near immortality and be second only to the ideal. Later, God willing, we’ll describe a third best. But for the moment, what description should we give of this second-best state? What’s the method by which a state like this is produced?

First of all, the citizens must make a distribution of land and houses;
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they must not farm in common, which is a practice too demanding for those born and bred and educated as ours are. But the distribution should be made with some such intention as this: each man who receives a portion of land should regard it as the common possession of the entire state. The land is his ancestral home and he must cherish it even more than children cherish their mother; furthermore, Earth is a goddess, and mistress of mortal men. (And the gods and spirits already established in the locality must be treated with the same respect.)

Additional measures must be taken to make sure that these arrangements [b] are permanent: the number of hearths established by the initial distribution must always remain the same; it must neither increase nor decrease. The best way for every state to ensure this will be as follows: the recipient of a holding should always leave from among his children only
one
heir to inherit his establishment. This will be his favorite son, who will succeed him and give due worship to the ancestors (who rank as gods) of the family and state; these must be taken to include not only those who have [c] already passed on, but also those who are still alive. As for the other children, in cases where there are more than one, the head of the family should marry off the females in accordance with the law we shall establish later; the males he must present for adoption to those citizens who have no children of their own—priority to be given to personal preferences as far as possible. But some people may have no preferences, or other families too may have surplus offspring, male or female; or, to take the opposite [d] problem, they may have too few, because of the onset of sterility. All these cases will be investigated by the highest and most distinguished official we shall appoint. He will decide what is to be done with the surpluses or deficiencies, and will do his best to discover a device to keep the number of households down to 5040. There are many devices available: if too many children are being born, there are measures to check propagation; on the other hand, a high birthrate can be encouraged and stimulated by conferring marks of distinction or disgrace, and the young can be admonished [e] by words of warning from their elders. This approach should do the trick, and if in the last resort we are in complete despair about variations from our number of 5040 households, and the mutual love of wives and husbands produces an excessive flow of citizens that drives us to distraction, we have that old expedient at hand, which we have often mentioned before. We can send out colonies of people that seem suitable, with mutual goodwill between the emigrants and their mother-city. By contrast, we may be flooded with a wave of diseases or by the ravages of wars, so that bereavements
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depress the citizens far below the appointed number. In this event we ought not to import citizens who have been brought up by a bastard education, if we can help it; but not even God, they say, can grapple with necessity.

So let’s pretend our thesis can talk and gives us this advice: ‘My dear sirs, don’t ignore the facts and be careless enough to undervalue the concepts of likeness, equality, identity and agreement, either in mathematics or in any other useful and productive science. In particular, your first task now is [b] to keep to the said number as long as you live; you must respect the upper limits of the total property which you originally distributed as being reasonable, and not buy and sell your holdings among yourselves. The lot by which they were distributed is a god, so there will be no support for you there, or from the legislator either. And there are two warnings [c] the law has for the disobedient: (A) You may choose or decline to take part in the distribution, but if you do take part you must observe the following conditions: (i) you must acknowledge that the land is sacred to all the gods; (ii) after priests and priestesses have offered prayers for that intention at the first, second and third sacrifices,

1. Anyone buying or selling his allotted land or house
must suffer
the penalty appropriate to the crime.
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You are to inscribe the details on pieces of cypress wood and put these [d] written records on permanent deposit in the temples. (B) You must appoint the official who seems to have the sharpest eyes to superintend the observance of the rule, so that the various contraventions may be brought to your notice and the disobedient punished by the law and the god alike. What a boon this rule is to all the states that observe it, given the appropriate arrangements, no wicked men—as the saying goes—will ever understand; such knowledge is the fruit of experience and virtuous habits. Such arrangements, [e] you see, involve very little by way of profit-making, and there is no need or opportunity for anyone to engage in any of the vulgar branches of commerce (you know how a gentleman’s character is coarsened by manual labor, which is generally admitted to be degrading), and no one will presume to rake in money from occupations such as that.’

All these considerations suggest a further law that runs like this: no
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private person shall be allowed to possess any gold or silver, but only coinage for day-to-day dealings which one can hardly avoid having with workmen and all other indispensable people of that kind (we have to pay wages to slaves and foreigners who work for money). For these purposes, we agree, they must possess coinage, legal tender among themselves, but valueless to the rest of mankind. The common Greek coinage is to be used for expeditions and visits to the outside world, such as when a man has [b] to be sent abroad as an ambassador or to convey some official message; to meet these occasions the state must always have a supply of Greek coinage. If a private individual should ever need to go abroad, he should first obtain leave of the authorities, and if he returns home with some surplus foreign money in his pocket he must deposit it with the state and take local money to the same value in exchange.