Without attempting to defend Plato on grounds of morality, we may allow that there is an aspect of the world which has not unnaturally led him into error.
We hardly appreciate the power which the idea of the State, like all other abstract ideas, exercised over the mind of Plato.

To us the State seems to be built up out of the family, or sometimes to be the framework in which family and social life is contained.

But to Plato in his present mood of mind the family is only a disturbing influence which, instead of filling up, tends to disarrange the higher unity of the State.

No organization is needed except a political, which, regarded from another point of view, is a military one.

The State is all-sufficing for the wants of man, and, like the idea of the Church in later ages, absorbs all other desires and affections.