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.

I must pay the penalty, I said, yet do me this much grace: Permit me to take a holiday, just as men of lazy minds are wont to feast themselves on their own thoughts when they walk alone.[*](Cf. Isocrates ii. 47, on those who in solitude do not deliberate but imagine what they wish, and Chesterton’s saying, All feeble spirits live in the future, because it is a soft job; cf. further on day-dreams, Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen, ii. p. 71, and Lucian’s Πλοῖον ἢ εὐχαί. Plato’s description anticipates the most recent psychology in everything except the term autistic thinking.) Such persons, without waiting to discover how their desires may be realized, dismiss that topic to save themselves the labor of deliberating about possibilities and impossibilities, assume their wish fulfilled, and proceed to work out the details in imagination, and take pleasure in portraying what they will do when it is realized, thus making still more idle a mind that is idle without that.[*](ἄλλως: Cf. 495 B.) I too now succumb to this weakness[*](Cf. Blaydes on Aristophanes Clouds 727.) and desire to postpone[*](Cf. Herodotus ix. 8. He returns to the postponed topic in 466 D, but again digresses and does not take it up definitely till 471 C or rather 473 C-D. The reason is that the third wave of paradox is also the condition of the possibility of realization. Cf. Introduction p. xvii.) and examine later the question of feasibility, but will at present assume that, and will, with your permission, inquire how the rulers will work out the details in practice, and try to show that nothing could be more beneficial to the state and its guardians than the effective operation of our plan. This is what I would try to consider first together with you, and thereafter the other topic, if you allow it. I do allow it, he said: proceed with the inquiry. I think, then, said I, that the rulers, if they are to deserve that name, and their helpers likewise, will, the one, be willing to accept orders,[*](Cf. on 340 A-B.) and the other, to give them, in some things obeying our laws, and imitating[*](That is to say, they are to imitate or conform to our principles in the details which we leave to them. So in the Laws, 770 B, 846 C, 876 E, and the secondary divinities in the Timaeus, 69 C. Cf. Politicus 301 A, and Aristotle Politics 1261 b 2 μιμεῖται.) them in others which we leave to their discretion. Presumably. You, then, the lawgiver, I said, have picked these men and similarly will select to give over to them women as nearly as possible of the same nature.[*](Cf. 456 B. Plato has already explained that he means of like nature in respect to capacity for government. There is no contradiction of the doctrine of the Politicus, 310 A (Cf. Laws 773 A-B) that the mating should blend opposite temperaments. Those elements are already mixed in the selection of the guardians. Cf. 375 B-C, 410 D-E and Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 62, n. 481.) And they, having houses and meals in common, and no private possessions of that kind, will dwell together, and being commingled in gymnastics and in all their life and education, will be conducted by innate necessity to sexual union. Is not what I say a necessary consequence? Not by the necessities of geometry, he said, but by those of love,[*](The phrase is imitated by Plutarch, Adv. Col. 1122 D φυσικαῖς, οὐ γεωμετρικαῖς ἑλκόμενος ἀνάγκαις.) which are perhaps keener and more potent than the other to persuade and constrain the multitude. They are, indeed, I said; but next, Glaucon, disorder and promiscuity in these unions or in anything else they do would be an unhallowed thing in a happy state and the rulers will not suffer it. It would not be right, he said. Obviously, then, we must arrange marriages, sacramental so far as may be. And the most sacred marriages would be those that were most beneficial.

By all means.How, then, would the greatest benefit result? Tell me this, Glaucon. I see that you have in your house hunting-dogs and a number of pedigree cocks.[*](Cf. Laws 789 B-C.) Have you ever considered something about their unions and procreations?What?[*](The riddling question to which the response is what? is a mannerism derived from tragedy, which becomes very frequent in the later style of the Sophist, Politicus and Philebus.) he said. In the first place, I said, among these themselves, although they are a select breed, do not some prove better than the rest? They do. Do you then breed from all indiscriminately, or are you careful to breed from the best[*](This commonplace of stirpiculture or eugenics, as it is now called, begins with Theognis 184, and has thus far got no further.)? From the best. And, again, do you breed from the youngest or the oldest, or, so far as may be, from those in their prime? From those in their prime. And if they are not thus bred, you expect, do you not, that your birds and hounds will greatly degenerate? I do, he said. And what of horses and other animals? I said; is it otherwise with them? It would be strange if it were, said he. Gracious, said I, dear friend, how imperative, then, is our need of the highest skill in our rulers, if the principle holds also for mankind. Well, it does, he said, but what of it? This, said I, that they will have to employ many of those drugs[*](A recurrence to the metaphor of 389 B, as we are reminded below in D.) of which we were speaking. We thought that an inferior physician sufficed for bodies that do not need drugs but yield to diet and regimen. But when it is necessary to prescribe drugs we know that a more enterprising and venturesome physician is required. True; but what is the pertinency? This, said I: it seems likely that our rulers will have to make considerable use of falsehood and deception for the benefit[*](Cf. 389 B, 414 C, and Laws 663 D ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ ψεύδεσθαι ) of their subjects. We said, I believe, that the use of that sort of thing was in the category of medicine. And that was right, he said. In our marriages, then, and the procreation of children, it seems there will be no slight need of this kind of right. How so? It follows from our former admissions, I said, that the best men must cohabit with the best women in as many cases as possible and the worst with the worst in the fewest, and that the offspring of the one must be reared and that of the other not, if the flock[*](Cf. on 343 A-B and Politicus 267 B-C, 268 B. αὖ below merely marks the second consideration, harmony, the first being eugenics.) is to be as perfect as possible. And the way in which all this is brought to pass must be unknown to any but the rulers, if, again, the herd of guardians is to be as free as possible from dissension. Most true, he said.

We shall, then, have to ordain certain festivals and sacrifices, in which we shall bring together the brides and the bridegrooms, and our poets must compose hymns suitable to the marriages that then take place. But the number of the marriages we will leave to the discretion of the rulers, that they may keep the number of the citizens as nearly as may be the same,[*](Plato apparently forgets that this legislation applies only to the guardians. The statement that ancient civilization was free from the shadow of Malthusianism requires qualification by this and many other passages. Cf. 372 C and Laws 740 D-E. The ancients in fact took it for granted.) taking into account wars and diseases and all such considerations, and that, so far as possible, our city may not grow too great or too small.Right, he said. Certain ingenious lots, then, I suppose, must be devised so that the inferior man at each conjugation may blame chance and not the rulers. Yes, indeed, he said. And on the young men, surely, who excel in war and other pursuits we must bestow honors and prizes, and, in particular, the opportunity of more frequent intercourse with the women, which will at the same time be a plausible pretext for having them beget as many of the children as possible. Right. And the children thus born will be taken over by the officials appointed for this, men or women or both, since, I take it, the official posts too are common to women and men. The offspring of the good, I suppose, they will take to the pen or créche, to certain nurses who live apart in a quarter of the city, but the offspring of the inferior, and any of those of the other sort who are born defective, they will properly dispose of in secret,[*](Opinions differ whether this is euphemism for exposure. On the frequency or infrequency of this practice cf. Professor La Rue Van Hook’s article in T.A.P.A. vol. li, and that of H. Bolkestein, Class. Phil. vol. xvii. (1922) pp. 222-239.) so that no one will know what has become of them. That is the condition, he said, of preserving the purity of the guardians’ breed. They will also supervise the nursing of the children, conducting the mothers to the pen when their breasts are full, but employing every device[*](Cf. on 414 B and Aristotle Politics 1262 a 14 ff.) to prevent anyone from recognizing her own infant. And they will provide others who have milk if the mothers are insufficient. But they will take care that the mothers themselves shall not suckle too long, and the trouble of wakeful nights and similar burdens they will devolve upon the nurses, wet and dry. You are making maternity a soft job[*](Another favorite idea and expression. Cf. Gorgias 459 C, Laws 648 C, 713 D, 720 C, 779 A, 903 E, Isocrates iv. 36, Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 13. 5.) for the women of the guardians. It ought to be, said I, but let us pursue our design. We said that the offspring should come from parents in their prime. True. Do you agree that the period of the prime may be fairly estimated at twenty years for a woman and thirty for a man? How do you reckon it?[*](Cf. on 458 C.) he said. The women, I said, beginning at the age of twenty, shall bear for the state[*](Half humorous legal language. Cf. Aristotle Politics 1335 b 28 λειτουργεῖν . . . πρὸς τεκνοποιίαν, and Lucan’s urbi pater est, urbique maritus (Phars. ii. 388). The dates for marriage are given a little differently in the Laws, 785 B, 833 C-D, men 30-35, women 16-20. On the whole question and Aristotle’s opinion cf. Newman, Introduction to Aristotle Politics p. 183; cf. also Grube, Class. Quarterly 1927, pp. 95 ff., The Marriage Laws in Plato’s Republic.) to the age of forty, and the man shall beget for the state from the time he passes his prime in swiftness in running to the age of fifty-five.

That is, he said, the maturity and prime for both of body and mind. Then, if anyone older or younger than the prescribed age meddles with procreation for the state, we shall say that his error is an impiety and an injustice, since he is begetting for the city a child whose birth, if it escapes discovery, will not be attended by the sacrifices and the prayers which the priests and priestesses and the entire city prefer at the ceremonial marriages, that ever better offspring may spring from good sires[*](Cf. Horace, Odes iv. 4. 29.) and from fathers helpful to the state sons more helpful still. But this child will be born in darkness and conceived in foul incontinence. Right, he said. And the same rule will apply, I said, if any of those still within the age of procreation goes in to a woman of that age with whom the ruler has not paired him. We shall say that he is imposing on the state a base-born, uncertified, and unhallowed child. Most rightly, he said. But when, I take it, the men and the women have passed the age of lawful procreation, we shall leave the men free to form such relations with whomsoever they please, except[*](Cf. Laws 838 A and 924 E.) daughter and mother and their direct descendants and ascendants, and likewise the women, save with son and father, and so on, first admonishing them preferably not even to bring to light[*](Cf. Newman, op. cit. p. 187.) anything whatever thus conceived, but if they are unable to prevent a birth to dispose of it on the understanding that we cannot rear such an offspring. All that sounds reasonable, he said; but how are they to distinguish one another’s fathers and daughters, and the other degrees of kin that you have just mentioned? They won’t, said I, except that a man will call all male offspring born in the tenth and in the seventh month after he became a bridegroom his sons, and all female, daughters, and they will call him father.[*](Cf. Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology, p. 89: A native of Hawaii, for example, calls by the name of father . . . every man of an age such that he could be his father. Cf. Aristophanes Eccles. 636-637.) And, similarly, he will call their offspring his grandchildren[*](Cf. 363 D and Laws 899 E, 927 B.) and they will call his group grandfathers and grandmothers. And all children born in the period in which their fathers and mothers were procreating will regard one another as brothers and sisters. This will suffice for the prohibitions of intercourse of which we just now spoke. But the law will allow brothers and sisters to cohabit if the lot so falls out and the Delphic oracle approves. Quite right, said he. This, then, Glaucon, is the manner of the community of wives and children among the guardians. That it is consistent with the rest of our polity and by far the best way is the next point that we must get confirmed by the argument. Is not that so?

It is, indeed, he said. Is not the logical first step towards such an agreement to ask ourselves what we could name as the greatest good for the constitution of a state and the proper aim of a lawgiver in his legislation, and what would be the greatest evil, and then to consider whether the proposals we have just set forth fit into the footprints[*](We may perhaps infer from the more explicit reference in Theaetetus 193 C that Plato is thinking of the recognition by footprints in Aeschylus Choeph.205-210.) of the good and do not suit those of the evil? By all means, he said. Do we know of any greater evil for a state than the thing that distracts it and makes it many instead of one, or a greater good than that which binds it together and makes it one? We do not. Is not, then, the community of pleasure and pain the tie that binds, when, so far as may be, all the citizens rejoice and grieve alike at the same births and deaths? By all means, he said. But the individualization of these feelings is a dissolvent, when some grieve exceedingly and others rejoice at the same happenings to the city and its inhabitants? Of course. And the chief cause of this is when the citizens do not utter in unison such words as mine and not mine, and similarly with regard to the word alien?[*](Cf. 423 B, Aristotle Politics 1261 b 16 ff., Plato’s Laws and the Unity of Plato’s Thought, Class. Phil. ix. (1914) p. 358, Laws 664 A, 739 C-E, Julian (Teubner) ii. 459, Teichmüller, Lit. Fehden, vol. i. p. 19, Mill, Utilitarianism, iii. 345: In an improving state of the human mind the influences are constantly on the increase which tend to generate in each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest, which, if perfect, would make him never think of or desire any beneficial condition for himself in the benefits of which they are not included; Spinoza, paraphrased by Hoffding, Hist. of Mod. Phil. i. p. 325: It would be best, since they seek a common good, if all could be like one mind and one body. Rabelais I. lvii. parodies Plato: Si quelqu’un ou quelqu’une disoit beuvons, tous beuvoient etc. Aristotle’s criticism, though using some of Plato’s phrases, does not mention his name at this point but speaks of τίνες, Politics 1261 b 7.)Precisely so. That city, then, is best ordered in which the greatest number use the expression mine and not mine of the same things in the same way. Much the best. And the city whose state is most like that of an individual man.[*](Cf. Laws 829 A.) For example, if the finger of one of us is wounded, the entire community of bodily connections stretching to the soul for integration[*](I so translate to bring out the analogy between Plato and e.g. Sherrington. For to the soul Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, n. 328, Laws 673 A, Timaeus 45 D, 584 C, Philebus 33, 34, 43 B-C. Poschenrieder, Die Platonischen Dialoge in ihrem Verhältnisse zu den Hippocratischen Schriften, p. 67, compares the De locis in homine, vi. p. 278 Littré.) with the dominant part is made aware, and all of it feels the pain as a whole, though it is a part that suffers, and that is how we come to say that the man has a pain in his finger. And for any other member of the man the same statement holds, alike for a part that labors in pain or is eased by pleasure. The same, he said, and, to return to your question, the best governed state most nearly resembles such an organism. That is the kind of a state, then, I presume, that, when anyone of the citizens suffers aught of good or evil, will be most likely to speak of the part that suffers as its own and will share the pleasure or the pain as a whole. Inevitably, he said, if it is well governed. It is time, I said, to return to our city and observe whether it, rather than any other, embodies the qualities agreed upon in our argument.[*](For these further confirmations of an established thesis cf. on 442-443.) We must, he said.