[Footnote 115: Plato, Repub. v. p. 461 C.]
[Footnote 116: Plato, Repub. v. p. 461 D.]
Besides all these direct provisions for the purity of the breed of Guardians, which will succeed (so Plato anticipates) in a large majority of cases--the Rulers will keep up an effective supervision of detail, so as to exclude any unworthy exception, and even to admit into the Guardians any youth of very rare and exceptional promise who may be born among the remaining community. For Plato admits that there may be accidental births both ways: brass and iron may by occasional accident give birth to gold or silver--and _vice versâ_.
[Side-note: Purpose to create an intimate and equal sympathy among all the Guardians, but to prevent exclusive sympathy of particular members.]
It is in this manner that Plato constitutes his body of Guardians; one thousand adult persons of both sexes,[117] in nearly equal numbers, together with a small proportion of children--the proportion of these latter must be very small since the total number is not allowed to increase. His end here is to create an intimate and equal sympathy among them all, like that between all the members of the same bodily organism: to abolish all independent and exclusive sympathies of particular parts: to make the city One and Indivisible--a single organism, instead of many distinct conterminous organisms: to provide that the causes of pleasure and pain shall be the same to all, so that a man shall have no feeling of mine or thine, except in reference to his own body and that of another, which Plato notes as the greatest good--instead of each individual struggling apart for his own objects and rejoicing on occasions when his neighbour sorrows, which Plato regards as the greatest evil.[118] All standing causes of disagreement or antipathy among the Guardians are assumed to be thus removed. But if any two hot-headed youths get into a quarrel, they must fight it out on the spot. This will serve as a lesson in gymnastics:--subject however to the interference of any old man as by-stander, whom they as well as all other young men are bound implicitly to obey.[119] Moreover all the miseries, privations, anxiety, and dependence, inseparable from the life of a poor man under the system of private property, will disappear entirely.[120]