Plato: The Republic

5. BOOK V (continued)

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 best-ordered State there is the nearest approach to this common feeling which you describe.

Then when any one of the citizens experiences any good or evil, the whole State will make his case their own, and will either rejoice or sorrow with him?

Yes, he said, that is what will happen in a well-ordered State.

It will now be time, I said, for us to return to our State and see whether this or some other form is most in accordance with these fundamental principles.

Very good.