rulers of the city will manipulate the lots on eugenic principles. They will arrange that the best
sires shall have the most children. All children will be taken away from their parents at birth,
and great care will be taken that no parents shall know who are their children, and no children
shall know who are their parents. Deformed children, and children of inferior parents, "will be
put away in some mysterious unknown place, as they ought to be." Children arising from unions
not sanctioned by the State are to be considered illegitimate. Mothers are to be between twenty
and forty, fathers between twenty-five and fifty-five. Outside these ages, intercourse is to be
free, but abortion or infanticide is to be compulsory. In the "marriages" arranged by the State,
the people concerned have no voice; they are to be actuated by the thought of their duty to the
State, not by any of those common emotions that the banished poets used to celebrate.
Since no one knows who his parents are, he is to call every one "father" whose age is such that
he might be his father, and similarly as regards "mother" and "brother" and "sister." (This sort
of thing happens among some savages, and used to puzzle missionaries.) There is to be no
marriage between a "father" and "daughter" or "mother" and "son"; in general, but not
absolutely, marriages of "brother" and "sister" are to be prevented. (I think if Plato had thought
this out more carefully he would have found that he had prohibited all marriages, except the
"brother-sister" marriages which he regards as rare exceptions.)
It is supposed that the sentiments at present attached to the words "father," "mother," "son," and
"daughter" will still attach to them under Plato's new arrangements; a young man, for instance,
will not strike an old man, because he might be striking his father.
The advantage sought is, of course, to minimize private possessive emotions, and so remove
obstacles to the domination of public spirit, as well as to acquiescence in the absence of private
property. It was largely motives of a similar kind that led to the celibacy of the clergy. *
I come last to the theological aspect of the system. I am not thinking of the accepted Greek
gods, but of certain myths which the government is to inculcate. Lying, Plato says explicity, is
to be a prerogative
* See Henry C. Lea, A History of Sacerdotal Celibacy.