Then we have made an enactment not only possible but in the highest degree beneficial to the State?
True.
Then let the wives of our guardians strip, for their virtue will be their robe, and let them share in the toils of war and the defence of their country; only in the distribution of labours the lighter are to be assigned to the women, who are the weaker natures, but in other respects their duties are to be the same. [B]And as for the man who laughs at naked women exercising their bodies from the best of motives, in his laughter he is plucking
‘A fruit of unripe wisdom,’
and he himself is ignorant of what he is laughing at, or what he is about;—for that is, and ever will be, the best of The noble saying.sayings, That the useful is the noble and the hurtful is the base.
Very true.
Here, then, is one difficulty in our law about women, which we may say that we have now escaped; the wave has not swallowed us up alive for enacting that the guardians of either sex should have all their pursuits in common; to the utility [C]and also to the possibility of this arrangement the consistency of the argument with itself bears witness.
Yes, that was a mighty wave which you have escaped.
The second and greater wave. Yes, I said, but a greater is coming; you will not think much of this when you see the next.
Go on; let me see.