The general sentiment of Hellas was opposed to his monstrous fancy.

The old poets, and in later time the tragedians, showed no want of respect for the family, on which much of their religion was based.

But the example of Sparta, and perhaps in some degree the tendency to defy public opinion, seems to have misled him.

He will make one family out of all the families of the state.

He will select the finest specimens of men and women and breed from these only.
Yet because the illusion is always returning (for the animal part of human nature will from time to time assert itself in the disguise of philosophy as well as of poetry), and also because any departure from established morality, even where this is not intended, is apt to be unsettling, it may be worth while to draw out a little more at length the objections to the Platonic marriage.