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 [C]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 157 number of persons apply the terms ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ in the same way to the same thing?
Quite true.
The State like a living being which feels altogether when hurt in any part. 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 towards the soul as a centre and forming one kingdom under the ruling power [D]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.