Republic

To such a city, then, or constitution I apply the terms good and right—and to the corresponding kind of man; but the others I describe as bad and mistaken, if this one is right, in respect both to the administration of states and to the formation of the character of the individual soul, they falling under four forms of badness. What are these, he said. And I was going on to enumerate them in what seemed to me the order of their evolution from one another, when Polemarchus—he sat at some little distance from Adeimantus—stretched forth his hand, and, taking hold of his garment from above by the shoulder, drew the other toward him and, leaning forward himself, spoke a few words in his ear, of which we overheard nothing else save only this, Shall we let him off, then, he said, or what shall we do? By no means, said Adeimantus, now raising his voice. What, pray, said I, is it that you are not letting off? You, said he. And for what reason, pray? said I. We think you are a slacker, he said, and are trying to cheat us out of a whole division, and that not the least, of the argument to avoid the trouble of expounding it, and expect to get away with it by observing thus lightly that, of course, in respect to women and children it is obvious to everybody that the possessions of friends will be in common. Well, isn’t that right, Adeimantus? I said. Yes, said he, but this word right, like other things, requires defining as to the way and manner of such a community. There might be many ways. Don’t, then, pass over the one that you have in mind. For we have long been lying in wait for you, expecting that you would say something both of the procreation of children and their bringing up, and would explain the whole matter of the community of women and children of which you speak. We think that the right or wrong management of this makes a great difference, all the difference in the world, in the constitution of a state;

so now, since you are beginning on another constitution before sufficiently defining this, we are firmly resolved, as you overheard, not to let you go till you have expounded all this as fully as you did the rest. Set me down, too, said Glaucon, as voting this ticket. Surely, said Thrasymachus, you may consider it a joint resolution of us all, Socrates. What a thing you have done, said I, in thus challenging me! What a huge debate you have started afresh, as it were, about this polity, in the supposed completion of which I was rejoicing, being only too glad to have it accepted as I then set it forth! You don’t realize what a swarm of arguments you are stirring up by this demand, which I foresaw and evaded to save us no end of trouble. Well, said Thrasymachus,do you suppose this company has come here to prospect for gold and not to listen to discussions? Yes, I said, in measure. Nay, Socrates, said Glaucon, the measure of listening to such discussions is the whole of life for reasonable men. So don’t consider us, and do not you yourself grow weary in explaining to us what we ask or, your views as to how this communion of wives and children among our guardians will be managed, and also about the rearing of the children while still young in the interval between birth and formal schooling which is thought to be the most difficult part of education. Try, then, to tell us what must be the manner of it. It is not an easy thing to expound, my dear fellow, said I, for even more than the provisions that precede it, it raises many doubts. For one might doubt whether what is proposed is possible and, even conceding the possibility, one might still be sceptical whether it is best. For which reason one as it were, shrinks from touching on the matter lest the theory be regarded as nothing but a wish-thought, my dear friend. Do not shrink, he said, for your hearers will not be inconsiderate nor distrustful nor hostile. And I said, My good fellow, is that remark intended to encourage me? It is, he said. Well, then, said I, it has just the contrary effect. For, if I were confident that I was speaking with knowledge, it would be an excellent encouragement. For there is both safety and security in speaking the truth with knowledge about our greatest and dearest concerns to those who are both wise and dear.

But to speak when one doubts himself and is seeking while he talks is a fearful and slippery venture. The fear is not of being laughed at, for that is childish, but, lest, missing the truth, I fall down and drag my friends with me in matters where it most imports not to stumble. So I salute Nemesis, Glaucon, in what I am about to say. For, indeed, I believe that involuntary homicide is a lesser fault than to mislead opinion about the honorable, the good, and the just. This is a risk that it is better to run with enemies than with friends, so that your encouragement is none. And Glaucon, with a laugh, said, Nay, Socrates, if any false note in the argument does us any harm, we release you as in a homicide case, and warrant you pure of hand and no deceiver of us. So speak on with confidence. Well, said I, he who is released in that case is counted pure as the law bids, and, presumably, if there, here too. Speak on, then, he said, for all this objection. We must return then, said I, and say now what perhaps ought to have been said in due sequence there. But maybe this way is right, that after the completion of the male drama we should in turn go through with the female, especially since you are so urgent. For men, then, born and bred as we described there is in my opinion no other right possession and use of children and women than that which accords with the start we gave them. Our endeavor, I believe, was to establish these men in our discourse as the guardians of a flock? Yes. Let us preserve the analogy, then, and assign them a generation and breeding answering to it, and see if it suits us or not. In what way? he said. In this. Do we expect the females of watch-dogs to join in guarding what the males guard and to hunt with them and share all their pursuits or do we expect the females to stay indoors as being incapacitated by the bearing and the breeding of the whelps while the males toil and have all the care of the flock? They have all things in common, he replied, except that we treat the females as weaker and the males as stronger. Is it possible, then, said I, to employ any creature for the same ends as another if you do not assign it the same nurture and education? It is not possible.

If, then, we are to use the women for the same things as the men, we must also teach them the same things. Yes. Now music together with gymnastic was the training we gave the men. Yes. Then we must assign these two arts to the women also and the offices of war and employ them in the same way. It would seem likely from what you say, he replied. Perhaps, then, said I, the contrast with present custom would make much in our proposals look ridiculous if our words are to be realized in fact. Yes, indeed, he said. What then, said I, is the funniest thing you note in them? Is it not obviously the women exercising unclad in the palestra together with the men, not only the young, but even the older, like old men in gymnasiums, when, though wrinkled and unpleasant to look at, they still persist in exercising? Yes, on my word, he replied, it would seem ridiculous under present conditions. Then, said I, since we have set out to speak our minds, we must not fear all the jibes with which the wits would greet so great a revolution, and the sort of things they would say about gymnastics and culture, and most of all about the bearing of arms and the bestriding of horses. You’re right, he said. But since we have begun we must go forward to the rough part of our law, after begging these fellows not to mind their own business but to be serious, and reminding them that it is not long since the Greeks thought it disgraceful and ridiculous, as most of the barbarians do now, for men to be seen naked. And when the practice of athletics began, first with the Cretans and then with the Lacedaemonians, it was open to the wits of that time to make fun of these practices, don’t you think so? I do. But when, I take it, experience showed that it is better to strip than to veil all things of this sort, then the laughter of the eyes faded away before that which reason revealed to be best, and this made it plain that he talks idly who deems anything else ridiculous but evil, and who tries to raise a laugh by looking to any other pattern of absurdity than that of folly and wrong or sets up any other standard of the beautiful as a mark for his seriousness than the good. Most assuredly, said he.

Then is not the first thing that we have to agree upon with regard to these proposals whether they are possible or not? And we must throw open the debate to anyone who wishes either in jest or earnest to raise the question whether female human nature is capable of sharing with the male all tasks or none at all, or some but not others, and under which of these heads this business of war falls. Would not this be that best beginning which would naturally and proverbially lead to the best end? Far the best, he said. Shall we then conduct the debate with ourselves in behalf of those others so that the case of the other side may not be taken defenceless and go by default? Nothing hinders, he said. Shall we say then in their behalf: There is no need, Socrates and Glaucon, of others disputing against you, for you yourselves at the beginning of the foundation of your city agreed that each one ought to mind as his own business the one thing for which he was fitted by nature? We did so agree, I think; certainly! Can it be denied then that there is by nature a great difference between men and women? Surely there is. Is it not fitting, then, that a different function should be appointed for each corresponding to this difference of nature? Certainly. How, then, can you deny that you are mistaken and in contradiction with yourselves when you turn around and affirm that the men and the women ought to do the same thing, though their natures are so far apart? Can you surprise me with an answer to that question? Not easily on this sudden challenge, he replied: but I will and do beg you to lend your voice to the plea in our behalf, whatever it may be. These and many similar difficulties, Glaucon, said I, I foresaw and feared, and so shrank from touching on the law concerning the getting and breeding of women and children. It does not seem an easy thing, by heaven, he said, no, by heaven. No, it is not, said I; but the fact is that whether one tumbles into a little diving-pool or plump into the great sea he swims all the same. By all means. Then we, too, must swim and try to escape out of the sea of argument in the hope that either some dolphin will take us on its back or some other desperate rescue. So it seems, he said. Come then, consider, said I, if we can find a way out. We did agree that different natures should have differing pursuits and that the nature of men and women differ. And yet now we affirm that these differing natures should have the same pursuits. That is the indictment. It is.

What a grand thing, Glaucon, said I, is the power of the art of contradiction! Why so? Because, said I, many appear to me to fall into it even against their wills, and to suppose that they are not wrangling but arguing, owing to their inability to apply the proper divisions and distinctions to the subject under consideration. They pursue purely verbal oppositions, practising eristic, not dialectic on one another. Yes, this does happen to many, he said; but does this observation apply to us too at present? Absolutely, said I; at any rate I am afraid that we are unawares slipping into contentiousness. In what way? The principle that natures not the same ought not to share in the same pursuits we are following up most manfully and eristically in the literal and verbal sense but we did not delay to consider at all what particular kind of diversity and identity of nature we had in mind and with reference to what we were trying to define it when we assigned different pursuits to different natures and the same to the same. No, we didn’t consider that, he said. Wherefore, by the same token, I said, we might ask ourselves whether the natures of bald and long-haired men are the same and not, rather, contrary. And, after agreeing that they were opposed, we might, if the bald cobbled, forbid the long-haired to do so, or vice versa. That would be ridiculous, he said. Would it be so, said I, for any other reason than that we did not then posit likeness and difference of nature in any and every sense, but were paying heed solely to the kind of diversity and homogeneity that was pertinent to the pursuits themselves? We meant, for example, that a man and a woman who have a physician’s mind have the same nature. Don’t you think so? I do. But that a man physician and a man carpenter have different natures? Certainly, I suppose. Similarly, then, said I, if it appears that the male and the female sex have distinct qualifications for any arts or pursuits, we shall affirm that they ought to be assigned respectively to each. But if it appears that they differ only in just this respect that the female bears and the male begets, we shall say that no proof has yet been produced that the woman differs from the man for our purposes, but we shall continue to think that our guardians and their wives ought to follow the same pursuits. And rightly, said he.

Then, is it not the next thing to bid our opponent tell us precisely for what art or pursuit concerned with the conduct of a state the woman’s nature differs from the man’s? That would be at any rate fair. Perhaps, then, someone else, too, might say what you were saying a while ago, that it is not easy to find a satisfactory answer on a sudden, but that with time for reflection there is no difficulty. He might say that. Shall we, then, beg the raiser of such objections to follow us, if we may perhaps prove able to make it plain to him that there is no pursuit connected with the administration of a state that is peculiar to woman? By all means. Come then, we shall say to him, answer our question. Was this the basis of your distinction between the man naturally gifted for anything and the one not so gifted—that the one learned easily, the other with difficulty; that the one with slight instruction could discover much for himself in the matter studied, but the other, after much instruction and drill, could not even remember what he had learned; and that the bodily faculties of the one adequately served his mind, while, for the other, the body was a hindrance? Were there any other points than these by which you distinguish the well endowed man in every subject and the poorly endowed? No one, said he, will be able to name any others. Do you know, then, of anything practised by mankind in which the masculine sex does not surpass the female on all these points? Must we make a long story of it by alleging weaving and the watching of pancakes and the boiling pot, whereon the sex plumes itself and wherein its defeat will expose it to most laughter? You are right, he said, that the one sex is far surpassed by the other in everything, one may say. Many women, it is true, are better than many men in many things, but broadly speaking, it is as you say. Then there is no pursuit of the administrators of a state that belongs to a woman because she is a woman or to a man because he is a man. But the natural capacities are distributed alike among both creatures, and women naturally share in all pursuits and men in all— yet for all the woman is weaker than the man. Assuredly. Shall we, then, assign them all to men and nothing to women? How could we? We shall rather, I take it, say that one woman has the nature of a physician and another not, and one is by nature musical, and another unmusical? Surely.

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, 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, 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 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, 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? 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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. I too now succumb to this weakness and desire to postpone 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, and the other, to give them, in some things obeying our laws, and imitating 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. 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, 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. Have you ever considered something about their unions and procreations? What? 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? 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 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 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 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.