‘Yes, if the breed of the guardians is to be kept pure.’
‘And will not these same officers have to superintend the rearing of the children, bringing the mothers to the nursery when their breasts are full, but taking every precaution that no mother shall know her own child, and providing other women that have milk, if the mothers have not enough: and must they not take care to limit the time during which the mothers are to suckle the children, committing the task of sitting up at night, and other troubles incident to infancy, to nurses and attendants?’
‘You make child-bearing a very easy business for the wives of the guardians.’
‘Yes, and so it ought to be.’
The second argument may be briefly stated. In the ideal State there will be no such thing as private property: a man will not have a house or dogs of his own, therefore (for our philosopher again seems hardly to realise that the analogy between house and wife is not quite exact), he will not have a wife and children of his own. The whole subject concludes with a return to the original topic of equality of opportunity in these terms:
‘Then you concede the principle that the women are to be put upon the same footing as the men, according to our description, in education, in bearing children, and in watching over the other citizens, and that whether they remain at home or are sent into the field, they are to share the duties of guardianship with the men, and join with them in the chase like dogs, and have everything in common with them so far as it is at all possible, and that in so doing they will be following the most desirable course and not violating the natural relation which ought to govern the mutual fellowship of the sexes?’
‘I do concede all this,’ he replied.
‘Then does it not remain for us,’ I proceeded, ‘to determine whether this community can possibly subsist among men as it can among other animals, and what are the conditions of its possibility?’
‘You have anticipated me in a suggestion I was about to make.’
‘As for their warlike operations, I suppose it is easy to see how they will be conducted.’