The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

they are mistaken who forbid us to converse
with slaves and say that we should employ command only, for slaves
stand even more in need of admonition than children.
    So much for this subject; the relations of husband and wife,
parent and child, their several virtues, what in their intercourse
with one another is good, and what is evil, and how we may pursue
the good and good and escape the evil, will have to be discussed
when we speak of the different forms of government. For, inasmuch
as every family is a part of a state, and these relationships are
the parts of a family, and the virtue of the part must have regard
to the virtue of the whole, women and children must be trained by
education with an eye to the constitution, if the virtues of either
of them are supposed to make any difference in the virtues of the
state. And they must make a difference: for the children grow up to
be citizens, and half the free persons in a state are women.
    Of these matters, enough has been said; of what remains, let us
speak at another time. Regarding, then, our present inquiry as
complete, we will make a new beginning. And, first, let us examine
the various theories of a perfect state.

Politics, Book II
    Translated by Benjamin Jowett
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I
    Our purpose is to consider what form of political community is
best of all for those who are most able to realize their ideal of
life. We must therefore examine not only this but other
constitutions, both such as actually exist in well-governed states,
and any theoretical forms which are held in esteem; that what is
good and useful may be brought to light. And let no one suppose
that in seeking for something beyond them we are anxious to make a
sophistical display at any cost; we only undertake this inquiry
because all the constitutions with which we are acquainted are
faulty.
    We will begin with the natural beginning of the subject. Three
alternatives are conceivable: The members of a state must either
have (1) all things or (2) nothing in common, or (3) some things in
common and some not. That they should have nothing in common is
clearly impossible, for the constitution is a community, and must
at any rate have a common place—one city will be in one place, and
the citizens are those who share in that one city. But should a
well ordered state have all things, as far as may be, in common, or
some only and not others? For the citizens might conceivably have
wives and children and property in common, as Socrates proposes in
the Republic of Plato. Which is better, our present condition, or
the proposed new order of society.
II
    There are many difficulties in the community of women. And the
principle on which Socrates rests the necessity of such an
institution evidently is not established by his arguments. Further,
as a means to the end which he ascribes to the state, the scheme,
taken literally is impracticable, and how we are to interpret it is
nowhere precisely stated. I am speaking of the premise 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 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 is 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 The
usefulness of the latter depends upon its quantity even where there
is no difference in quality (for mutual protection is the end aimed
at), just as a greater weight of anything is more useful than a
less (in like manner, a state differs from a nation, when the
nation has not its population organized in villages, but lives an
Arcadian sort of life); but the elements out of which a unity is to
be formed differ in kind. Wherefore the principle of compensation,
as I have already remarked in the Ethics, is the salvation of
states. Even among freemen and equals this is a principle which
must be maintained, for they cannot an rule together, but must
change at the end of a year or some other period of time or in some
order of succession. The result is that