‘Yes, they were.’
‘Then, as far as the guardianship of a state is concerned, there is no difference between the natures of the man and of the woman, but only various degrees of weakness and strength?’
‘Apparently there is none.’
‘Then we shall have to select duly qualified women also to share in the life and official labours of the duly qualified men; since we find that they are competent to the work, and of kindred nature with the men.’
It seems to Plato that it is both practicable and desirable that men and women should have the same training and the same duties; not, indeed, all men and all women, for Plato’s is an aristocratic State and he is chiefly legislating for his guardian class, but at least the better men and the better women. So he does not shrink from absolute similarity of education:
Then the wives of our guardians must strip for their exercises, inasmuch as they will put on virtue instead of raiment, and must bear their part in war and the other duties comprised in the guardianship of the State, and must engage in no other occupations: though of these tasks the lighter parts must be given to the women rather than to the men, in consideration of the weakness of their sex. But as for the man who laughs at the idea of undressed women going through gymnastic exercises, as a means of realising what is most perfect, his ridicule is but ‘unripe fruit plucked from the tree of wisdom’ and he knows not, to all appearance, what he is laughing at or what he is doing: for it is, and ever will be, a most excellent maxim, that the useful is noble and the hurtful base.
Thus the first wave of the discussion is successfully surmounted: the second and more dangerous is the proposition that wives and children shall be held in common. The company refuse to admit without discussion that it is either desirable or practicable, and a double line of argument is used. If men and women are educated and live together, human nature will soon bring about even closer associations. Any irregular union would be an offence against the State, and it is of the first importance to science that the best citizens should have the largest number of children. Therefore marriages and births must be a matter of State regulation, and any possible discontent must be averted by an elaborate system of pretence. The details are fixed:
‘As fast as the children are born they will be received by officers appointed for the purpose, whether men or women, or both: for I presume that the State offices also will be held in common both by men and women.’
‘They will.’
‘Well, these officers, I suppose, will take the children of good parents and place them in the general nursery under the charge of certain nurses, living apart in a particular quarter of the city; while the issue of inferior parents, and all imperfect children that are born to the others, will be concealed, as is fitting, in some mysterious and unknown hiding-place.’