The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

appears to be quite
impracticable. The error of Socrates must be attributed to the
false notion of unity from which he starts. Unity there should be,
both of the family and of the state, but in some respects only. For
there is a point at which a state may attain such a degree of unity
as to be no longer a state, or at which, without actually ceasing
to exist, it will become an inferior state, like harmony passing
into unison, or rhythm which has been reduced to a single foot. The
state, as I was saying, is a plurality which should be united and
made into a community by education; and it is strange that the
author of a system of education which he thinks will make the state
virtuous, should expect to improve his citizens by regulations of
this sort, and not by philosophy or by customs and laws, like those
which prevail at Sparta and Crete respecting common meals, whereby
the legislator has made property common. Let us remember that we
should not disregard the experience of ages; in the multitude of
years these things, if they were good, would certainly not have
been unknown; for almost everything has been found out, although
sometimes they are not put together; in other cases men do not use
the knowledge which they have. Great light would be thrown on this
subject if we could see such a form of government in the actual
process of construction; for the legislator could not form a state
at all without distributing and dividing its constituents into
associations for common meals, and into phratries and tribes. But
all this legislation ends only in forbidding agriculture to the
guardians, a prohibition which the Lacedaemonians try to enforce
already.
    But, indeed, Socrates has not said, nor is it easy to decide,
what in such a community will be the general form of the state. The
citizens who are not guardians are the majority, and about them
nothing has been determined: are the husbandmen, too, to have their
property in common? Or is each individual to have his own? And are
the wives and children to be individual or common. If, like the
guardians, they are to have all things in common, what do they
differ from them, or what will they gain by submitting to their
government? Or, upon what principle would they submit, unless
indeed the governing class adopt the ingenious policy of the
Cretans, who give their slaves the same institutions as their own,
but forbid them gymnastic exercises and the possession of arms. If,
on the other hand, the inferior classes are to be like other cities
in respect of marriage and property, what will be the form of the
community? Must it not contain two states in one, each hostile to
the other He makes the guardians into a mere occupying garrison,
while the husbandmen and artisans and the rest are the real
citizens. But if so the suits and quarrels, and all the evils which
Socrates affirms to exist in other states, will exist equally among
them. He says indeed that, having so good an education, the
citizens will not need many laws, for example laws about the city
or about the markets; but then he confines his education to the
guardians. Again, he makes the husbandmen owners of the property
upon condition of their paying a tribute. But in that case they are
likely to be much more unmanageable and conceited than the Helots,
or Penestae, or slaves in general. And whether community of wives
and property be necessary for the lower equally with the higher
class or not, and the questions akin to this, what will be the
education, form of government, laws of the lower class, Socrates
has nowhere determined: neither is it easy to discover this, nor is
their character of small importance if the common life of the
guardians is to be maintained.
    Again, if Socrates makes the women common, and retains private
property, the men will see to the fields, but who will see to the
house? And who will do so if the agricultural class have both their
property and their wives in common? Once more: it is absurd to
argue, from the analogy of the animals, that men and women should
follow the same pursuits, for animals have not to manage a
household. The government, too, as constituted by Socrates,
contains elements of danger; for he makes the same persons always
rule. And if this is often a cause of disturbance among the meaner
sort, how much more among high-spirited warriors? But that the
persons whom he makes rulers must be the same is evident; for the
gold which the God mingles in the souls of men is not at one