And this agrees with the other principle which we were affirming,—that the guardians were not to have houses or [C]lands or any other property; their pay was to be their food, which they were to receive from the other citizens, and they were to have no private expenses; for we intended them to preserve their true character of guardians.
Right, he replied.
There will be no private interests among them, and therefore no lawsuits or trials for assault or violence to elders. Both the community of property and the community of families, as I am saying, tend to make them more truly guardians; they will not tear the city in pieces by differing about ‘mine’ and ‘not mine;’ each man dragging any [D]acquisition which he has made into a separate house of his own, where he has a separate wife and children and private pleasures and pains; but all will be affected as far as may be by the same pleasures and pains because they are all of one opinion about what is near and dear to them, and therefore they all tend towards a common end.
Certainly, he replied.
And as they have nothing but their persons which they can call their own, suits and complaints will have no existence [E]among them; they will be delivered from all those quarrels of which money or children or relations are the occasion. 160
Of course they will.
Neither will trials for assault or insult ever be likely to occur among them. For that equals should defend themselves against equals we shall maintain to be honourable and right; [465]we shall make the protection of the person a matter of necessity.
That is good, he said.
Yes; and there is a further good in the law; viz. that if a man has a quarrel with another he will satisfy his resentment then and there, and not proceed to more dangerous lengths.
Certainly.