In thus excluding women from the sphere of pure, super-sensual
romantic love, Plato shows himself a Greek to the marrow. In the Greek
view, to be a woman was to be inferior to man from every point of
view--even personal beauty. Plato's writings abound in passages which
reveal his lofty contempt for women. In the _Laws_ (VI., 781) he
declares that "women are accustomed to creep into dark places, and
when dragged out into the light they will exert their utmost powers of
resistance, and be far too much for the legislator." While unfolding,
in _Timaeus_ (91), his theory of the creation of man, he says
gallantly that "of the men who came into the world, those who were
cowards or led unrighteous lives may with reason be supposed to have
changed into the nature of women in the second generation;" and on
another page (42) he puts the same idea even more insultingly by
writing that the man
"who lived well during his appointed time was to return
and dwell in his native star, and there he would have a
blessed existence. But if he failed in attaining this,
at the second birth he would pass into a woman, and if,
when in that state of being, he did not desist from
evil, he would continually be changed into some brute
who resembled him in the evil nature which he had
acquired."
In other words, in Plato's mind a woman ranks half-way between a man
and a brute. "Woman's nature," he says, "is inferior to that of men in
capacity for virtue" (_Laws_, VI., 781); and his idea of ennobling a
woman consists in making her resemble a man, giving her the same
education, the same training in athletics and warlike exercises, in
wrestling naked with each other, even though the old and ugly would be
laughed at (_Republic_, Bk. V.). Fathers, sons, mothers, daughters,
will, in his ideal republic, go to war together.
"Let a man go out to war from twenty to sixty years,
and for a woman if there appear any need of making use
of her in military service, let the time of service be
after she shall have brought forth children up to fifty
years of age" (_Laws_, VI., 785).
Having thus abolished woman, except as a breeder of sons, Plato
proceeds to eliminate marriage and morality. "The brave man is to have
more wives than others, and he is to have first choice in such matters
more than others" (_Republic_, V., 468). All wives, however, must be
in common, no man having a monopoly of a woman. Nor must there be any
choice or preference for individuals. The mothers are to be arranged
by officials, who will see that the good pair with the good, the bad
with the bad, the offspring of the latter being destroyed, just as is
done in the breeding of animals. Maternal and filial love also must be
abolished, infants being taken from their mothers and educated in
common. Nor must husband and wife remain together longer than is
necessary for the perpetuation of the species. This is the only object
of marriage in Plato's opinion; for he recommends (_Laws_, VI., 784)
that if a couple have no children after being married ten years, they
should be "divorced for their mutual benefit."
In all history there is not a more extraordinary spectacle than that
presented by the greatest philosopher of Greece, proposing in his
ideal republic to eliminate every variety of family affection, thus
degrading the relations of the sexes to a level inferior in some
respects even to that of Australian savages, who at least allow
mothers to rear their own children. And this philosopher, the most
radical enemy love has ever known--practically a champion of
promiscuity--has, by a strange irony of fate, lent his name to the
purest and most exalted form of love![307]