II. 2There are many difficulties in the community of women. The principle on which Socrates rests the necessity of such an institution does not appear to be established by his arguments; and then again as a means to the end which he ascribes to the state, taken literally, it is impossible, and how we are to limit and qualify it is nowhere precisely stated. I am speaking2 of the premiss from which the argument of Socrates proceeds, that the greater the unity of the state the better. Is it not obvious that a state may at length attain such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state?—since the nature of a state is to be a plurality, and in tending to greater unity, from being a state, it becomes a family, and from being a family, an individual; for the family may be said to be more one than the state, and the individual than the family. So that we ought not to attain this greatest unity even if we could, for it would be the destruction of the state. Again, a state is3 not made up only of so many men, but of different kinds of men; for similars do not constitute a state. It is not like a military alliance, of which the usefulness depends upon its quantity even where there is no difference in quality. For in that mutual protection is the end aimed at; and the question is the same as about the scales of a balance: which is the heavier?
In like manner, a state differs from a nation, whenever in a nation the people are not dispersed in villages, but are in the condition of the Arcadians; in a state the elements out of which the unity is to be formed differ in kind. Wherefore4 the principle of reciprocity[1], as I have already remarked in the Ethics[2], is the salvation of states. And among freemen and equals this is a principle which must be maintained, for- ↑ Or, 'reciprocal proportion.'
- ↑ N. Eth. v. 8. § 6.
