Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/782

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY. XIV

PART III. GENERAL STRUCTURE OF SOCIETIES

CHAPTER VII. THE SOCIAL FRONTIERS (CONTINUED)

SECTION V. THE GREEK WORLD (CONTINUED)

It is very remarkable that neither Plato in the Laws and in the Republic, nor Aristotle in the Politics, attempts to establish a theory of the social frontiers. However, in the fourth book of the Republic Plato raises the question " of the most just limits which the magistrates can grant to the growth of their state and its territory, beyond which limits it shall not try to expand." He supposes, then, that these limits, as all social structure, are the work of political architects, and, furthermore, that they have fixed natural limits. These limits appear to him very justly to have relation with the organization of the state. " This state must be permitted to grow as much as possible without ceasing from being one, and absolutely not beyond." The state will therefore be able to extend itself so far as it will preserve the type of community which Plato definitely pretends to impose upon it.

One can, however, legitimately suppose that Plato foresaw the realization of his ideal plan for all Greece, by his demanding not only an international code of war for all Greek tribes, but even the suppression of the war between the Greek republics. 1 Society is based upon common rights, both economic and moral : this is the grandeur of his sociological conception; his society is co-ordinate, and its extension is limited only by the measure of this co-ordination; its limits have relation with its composition and its inner structure. He seems, however, to forget the influ- ence of the surrounding social conditions. He supposed, perhaps, like Weng-Tsen, that this influence could be disregarded, as the best-organized state naturally must assimilate the others. In his Laws Plato wishes that the city be far from the sea and from every other city ; thus it will be better protected from corruption, and it will preserve itself better. In short, the preoccupation with

'Book V.

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