Species and Mother of Invention

Over the centuries, the passage from Republic, 369C: "Let us create a city from the beginning. . . .Its real creator, as it appears, will be our needs" has been modalized as "Necessity is the mother of our invention", trivialized as "Necessity is the mother of invention", and, more recently, appropriated from for the name of a group of Dadaist musicians.  Accordingly, lost has been the uniqueness of the passage in the history of Political Philosophy.  For, while the foundation of the typical Modern contribution to the genre has been the Happiness-seeking individual person, Plato begins by positing the biological needs of the collective: food, shelter, clothing, etc.  Thus, at the beginning of Political Philosophy, but hardly repeated since, not even later in the Republic, the Species briefly appears as the progenitor of the enterprise.