fathers and mothers to each other; for, from the mutual
likeness there is between the sire and the offspring,
they will necessarily conclude in what relation they
stand to each other, which circumstance, we are informed
by those writers who describe different parts of the
world, does sometimes happen; for in Upper Africa there
are wives in common who yet deliver their children
to their respective fathers, being guided by their
likeness to them. There are also some mares and
cows which naturally bring forth their young so like
the male, that we can easily distinguish by which
of them they were impregnated: such was the mare
called Just, in Pharsalia.
CHAPTER IV
Besides, those who contrive this plan of community
cannot easily avoid the following evils; namely, blows,
murders involuntary or voluntary, quarrels, and reproaches,
all which it would be impious indeed to be guilty
of towards our fathers and mothers, or those who are
nearly related to us; though not to those who are
not connected to us by any tie of affinity: and
certainly these mischiefs must necessarily happen
oftener amongst those who do not know how they are
connected to each other than those who do; and when
they do happen, if it is among the first of these,
they admit of a legal expiation, but amongst the latter
that cannot be done. It is also absurd for those
who promote a community of children to forbid those
who love each other from indulging themselves in the
last excesses of that passion, while they do not restrain
them from the passion itself, or those intercourses
which are of all things most improper, between a Father
and a son, a brother and a brother, and indeed the
thing itself is most absurd. It is also ridiculous
to prevent this intercourse between the nearest relations,
for no other reason than the violence of the pleasure,
while they think that the relation of father and daughter,
the brother and sister, is of no consequence at all.
It seems also more advantageous for the state, that
the husbandmen should have their wives and children
in common than the military, for there will be less
affection [1262b] among them in that case than when
otherwise; for such persons ought to be under subjection,
that they may obey the laws, and not seek after innovations.
Upon the whole, the consequences of such a law as
this would be directly contrary to those things which
good laws ought to establish, and which Socrates endeavoured
to establish by his regulations concerning women and
children: for we think that friendship is the
greatest good which can happen to any city, as nothing
so much prevents seditions: and amity in a city
is what Socrates commends above all things, which
appears to be, as indeed he says, the effect of friendship;
as we learn from Aristophanes in the Erotics, who
says, that those who love one another from the excess
of that passion, desire to breathe the same soul, and
from being two to be blended into one: from whence
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Politics: A Treatise on Government from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
