Republic

Can we, then, deny that one woman is naturally athletic and warlike and another unwarlike and averse to gymnastics?I think not.And again, one a lover, another a hater, of wisdom? And one high-spirited, and the other lacking spirit?That also is true.Then it is likewise true that one woman has the qualities of a guardian and another not. Were not these the natural qualities of the men also whom we selected for guardians?They were.The women and the men, then, have the same nature in respect to the guardianship of the state, save in so far as the one is weaker, the other stronger.Apparently.Women of this kind, then, must be selected to cohabit with men of this kind and to serve with them as guardians since they are capable of it and akin by nature.By all means.And to the same natures must we not assign the same pursuits?The same.We come round,[*](Cf. Gorgias 517 C.) then, to our previous statement, and agree that it does not run counter to nature to assign music and gymnastics to the wives of the guardians.By all means.Our legislation, then, was not impracticable or utopian,[*](Cf. on 450 D.) since the law we proposed accorded with nature. Rather, the other way of doing things, prevalent today, proves, as it seems, unnatural.Apparently.The object of our inquiry was the possibility and the desirability[*](Cf. Introduction p. xvii.) of what we were proposing.It was.That it is possible has been admitted.Yes.The next point to be agreed upon is that it is the best way.Obviously.For the production of a guardian, then, education will not be one thing for our men and another for our women, especially since the nature which we hand over to it is the same.There will be no difference.How are you minded, now, in this matter?In what?In the matter of supposing some men to be better and some worse,[*](This is only a more complicated case of the point of style noted on 349 D. Cf. Cratylus 386 A, Sophist 247 A.) or do you think them all alike?By no means.In the city, then, that we are founding, which do you think will prove the better men, the guardians receiving the education which we have described or the cobblers educated by the art of cobbling[*](Cf. on 421 A. We should not press this incidental phrase to prove that Plato would not educate all the citizens, as he in fact does in the Laws and by implication in the Politicus.)?An absurd question, he said. I understand, said I; and are not these the best of all the citizens? By far. And will not these women be the best of all the women? They, too, by far. Is there anything better for a state than the generation in it of the best possible women[*](Cf. Morley, Voltaire, p. 103: It has been rather the fashion to laugh at the Marquise de Châtelet, for no better reason than that she, being a woman, studied Newton. . . . There is probably nothing which would lead to so rapid and marked an improvement in the world as a large increase of the number of women in it with the will and the capacity to master Newton as thoroughly as she did.) and men? There is not.

And this, music and gymnastics applied as we described will effect.Surely.Then the institution we proposed is not only possible but the best for the state.That is so.The women of the guardians, then, must strip, since they will be clothed with virtue as a garment,[*](Cf. Rousseau, Lettre à d’Alembert, Couvertes de l’honnêteté publique.) and must take their part with the men in war and the other duties of civic guardianship and have no other occupation. But in these very duties lighter tasks must be assigned to the women than to the men because of their weakness as a class. But the man who ridicules unclad women, exercising because it is best that they should, plucks the unripe[*](Cf. Pindar, fr. 209 Schroeder, ἀτελῆ σοφίας καρπὸν δρέπειν. Plato varies the quotation to suit his purpose.) fruit of laughter and does not know, it appears, the end of his laughter nor what he would be at. For the fairest thing that is said or ever will be said is this, that the helpful is fair[*](This is one of the chief texts for the alleged utilitarianism of Plato, a question too complicated to be settled by anything less than a comparative study of the Protagoras, Gorgias, Phaedo, Philebus, Republic (IX) and Laws. ὠφέλιμον suggests benefit rather than utility. Cf. Introduction to second volume of this translation, and on 339 A-B.) and the harmful foul.Assuredly.In this matter, then, of the regulation of women, we may say that we have surmounted one of the waves of our paradox and have not been quite swept[*](Cf. Aeschylus Septem, in fine.) away by it in ordaining that our guardians and female guardians must have all pursuits in common, but that in some sort the argument concurs with itself in the assurance that what it proposes is both possible and beneficial.It is no slight wave that you are thus escaping.You will not think it a great[*](For this form of exaggeration Cf. on 414 C, 339 B.) one, I said, when you have seen the one that follows. Say on then and show me, said he. This, said I, and all that precedes has for its sequel, in my opinion, the following law. What? That these women shall all be common[*](On the whole topic cf. Introduction p. xxxiv, Lucian, Fugitivi 18 οὐκ εἰδότες ὅπως ὁ ἱερὸς ἐκεῖνος ἠξίου κοινὰς ἡγεῖσθαι τὰς γυναῖκας, Epictetus fr. 53, p. 21, Rousseau, Emile, v: je ne parle point de cette prétendue communauté de femmes dont le reproche tant répété prouve que ceux qui le lui font ne l’ont jamais lu. But Rousseau dissents violently from what he calls cette promiscuité civile qui confond partout les deux sexes dans les mêmes emplois. Cf. further the denunciations of the Christian fathers passim, who are outdone by De Quincey’s Otaheitian carnival of licentious appetite, connected with a contempt of human life which is excessive even for paganism. Most of the obvious parallels between Plato and Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae follow as a matter of course from the very notion of communal marriage and supply no evidence for the dating of a supposed earlier edition of the whole or a part of the Republic. In any case the ideas of the Republic might have come to Aristophanes in conversation before publication; and the Greeks knew enough of the facts collected in such books as Westermarck’s Marriage, not to be taken altogether by surprise by Plato’s speculations. Cf. Herodotus iv. 104, and Aristotle Politics 1262 a 20. Cf. further Adam’s exhaustive discussion in the appendix to this book, Grube, The Marriage Laws in Plato’s Republic, Classical Quarterly, 1927, pp. 95 ff., Teichmüller, Literarische Fehden, i. p. 19 n., and the more recent literature collected in Praechter-Ueberweg, 12th ed. i. p. 207, Pöhlmann, Geschichte der Sozialenfrage und des Sozialsmus in der antiken Welt, ii. p. 578, Pohlenz, Aus Platon’s Werdezeit, pp. 225-228, C. Robert, Hermes lvii. pp. 351 ff.) to all the men, and that none shall cohabit with any privately; and that the children shall be common, and that no parent shall know its own offspring nor any child its parent. This is a far bigger paradox than the other, and provokes more distrust as to its possibility and its utility.[*](A distinct suggestion of the topics of the useful and the possible in Aristotle’s Rhetoric.) I presume, said I, that there would be no debate about its utility, no denial that the community of women and children would be the greatest good, supposing it possible. But I take it that its possibility or the contrary would be the chief topic of contention. Both, he said, would be right sharply debated. You mean, said I, that I have to meet a coalition of arguments. But I expected to escape from one of them, and that if you agreed that the thing was beneficial, it would remain for me to speak only of its feasibility. You have not escaped detection, he said, in your attempted flight, but you must render an account of both.