Justice -- Early works to 1800; Political science -- Early works to 1800; Utopias -- Early works to 1800
Then we must enlarge our borders; for the original healthy State is no
longer sufficient. Now will the city have to fill and swell with a
multitude of callings which are not required by any natural want; such as
the whole tribe of hunters and actors, of whom one large class have to do
with forms and colours; another will be the votaries of music--poets and
their attendant train of rhapsodists, players, dancers, contractors; also
makers of divers kinds of articles, *373C* including women's dresses. And
we shall want more servants. Will not tutors be also in request, and
nurses wet and dry, tirewomen and barbers, as well as confectioners and
cooks; and swineherds, too, who were not needed and therefore had no place
in the former edition of our State, but are needed now? They must not be
forgotten: and there will be animals of many other kinds, if people eat
them.
Certainly.
*373D* And living in this way we shall have much greater need of
physicians than before?
Much greater.
And the country which was enough to support the original inhabitants will
be too small now, and not enough?
Quite true.
[Sidenote: The territory of our State must be enlarged; and hence will
arise war between us and our neighbours.]
Then a slice of our neighbours' land will be wanted by us for pasture and
tillage, and they will want a slice of ours, if, like ourselves, they
exceed the limit of necessity, and give themselves up to the unlimited
accumulation of wealth?
*373E* That, Socrates, will be inevitable.
And so we shall go to war, Glaucon. Shall we not?
Most certainly, he replied. {55}
Then without determining as yet whether war does good or harm, thus much
we may affirm, that now we have discovered war to be derived from causes
which are also the causes of almost all the evils in States, private as
well as public.
Undoubtedly.
And our State must once more enlarge; and this time the enlargement will
be nothing short of a whole army, which *374A* will have to go out and
fight with the invaders for all that we have, as well as for the things
and persons whom we were describing above.
Why? he said; are they not capable of defending themselves?
[Sidenote: War is an art, and as no art can be pursued with success unless
a man's whole attention is devoted to it, a soldier cannot be allowed to
exercise any calling but his own.]
No, I said; not if we were right in the principle which was acknowledged
by all of us when we were framing the State: the principle, as you will
remember, was that one man cannot practise many arts with success.
Very true, he said.
*374B* But is not war an art?
Certainly.
And an art requiring as much attention as shoemaking?
Quite true.
[Sidenote: The warrior's art requires a long apprenticeship and many
natural gifts.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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