republic (books 1 - 5)   

And how will they proceed? Will each bring the result of
his labors into a common stock?--the individual husbandman,
for example, producing for four, and laboring four times as
long and as much as he need in the provision of food with
which he supplies others as well as himself; or will he have
nothing to do with others and not be at the trouble of producing
for them, but provide for himself alone a fourth of the food in
a fourth of the time, and in the remaining three-fourths of his
time be employed in making a house or a coat or a pair of shoes,
having no partnership with others, but supplying himself all his
own wants?

Adeimantus thought that he should aim at producing food
only and not at producing everything.

Probably, I replied, that would be the better way; and when
I hear you say this, I am myself reminded that we are not all
alike; there are diversities of natures among us which are
adapted to different occupations.

Very true.

And will you have a work better done when the workman
has many occupations, or when he has only one?

When he has only one.

Further, there can be no doubt that a work is spoilt when
not done at the right time?

No doubt.

For business is not disposed to wait until the doer of the
business is at leisure; but the doer must follow up what he is
doing, and make the business his first object.

He must.

And if so, we must infer that all things are produced more
plentifully and easily and of a better quality when one man does
one thing which is natural to him and does it at the right time,
and leaves other things.
Undoubtedly.

Then more than four citizens will be required; for the hus-
bandman will not make his own plough or mattock, or other
implements of agriculture, if they are to be good for anything.
Neither will the builder make his tools--and he, too, needs
many; and in like manner the weaver and shoemaker.

True.

Then carpenters and smiths and many other artisans will be
sharers in our little State, which is already beginning to grow?

True.

Yet even if we add neatherds, shepherds, and other herds-
men, in order that our husbandmen may have oxen to plough
with, and builders as well as husbandmen may have draught
cattle, and curriers and weavers fleeces and hides--still our
State will not be very large.

That is true; yet neither will it be a very small State which