Republic

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.