Yes, certainly.
Shall we try to find a common basis by asking of ourselves what ought to be the chief aim of the legislator in making laws and in the organization of a State—what is the greatest good, and what is the greatest evil, and then consider whether our previous description has the stamp of the good or of the evil?
By all means.
Can there be any greater evil than discord and distraction and plurality where unity ought to reign? or any greater good than the bond of unity?
There cannot.
And there is unity where there is community of pleasures and pains—where all the citizens are glad or grieved on the same occasions of joy and sorrow?
No doubt.
Yes; and where there is no common but only private feeling a State is disorganized—when you have one-half of the world triumphing and the other plunged in grief at the same events happening to the city or the citizens?
Certainly.
Such differences commonly originate in a disagreement about the use of the terms “mine” and “not mine,” “his” and “not his.”
Exactly so.
And is not that the best-ordered State in which the greatest number of persons apply the terms “mine” and “not mine” in the same way to the same thing?
Quite true.
Or that again which most nearly approaches to the condition of the individual—as in the body, when but a finger of one of us is hurt, the whole frame, drawn toward the soul as a centre and forming one kingdom under the ruling power therein, feels the hurt and sympathizes all together with the part affected, and we say that the man has a pain in his finger; and the same expression is used about any other part of the body, which has a sensation of pain at suffering or of pleasure at the alleviation of suffering.
Very true, he replied; and I agree with you that in the best-ordered State there is the nearest approach to this common feeling which you describe.
