102 PLATO
able to examine something that’s being said by making distinctions according to forms,
but pounce on the contradiction in what’s been said according to a mere word, subject-
ing one another to contention and not conversation.”
“That is exactly the experience of many people,” he said, “but that surely doesn’t
apply to us in the present circumstance, does it?”
“It does absolutely,” I said. “At any rate, we’re running the risk of engaging in
debate unintentionally.”
“How?”
“We’re pouncing, in an altogether bold and contentious manner, on ‘the nature
that’s not the same’ as a result of a word, because that’s what’s required not to have the
same pursuits, but we didn’t give any consideration whatever to what form of different or
same nature we were marking off, and how far it extended, at the time when we delivered
up different pursuits to a different nature and the same ones to the same nature.”
“No, we didn’t consider that,” he said.
“Well, according to that, then,” I said, “it seems like we’re entitled to ask ourselves
whether it’s the same nature that belongs to bald people as to longhaired ones, and not the
opposite one, and whenever we agree that it’s opposite, if bald people do leatherwork, not
allow longhaired people to, or if the longhaired ones do, not allow the others.”
“That would certainly be ridiculous,” he said.
“Well is it ridiculous for any other reason,” I said, “than because we weren’t reck-
oning on every sort of same and different nature at the time, but only watching out for
that form of otherness and likeness that was relevant to the pursuits themselves? For
example, with a male doctor and a female doctor, we meant that it’s the soul that has the
same nature. Don’t you think so?”
“I do.”
“But with a male doctor and a male carpenter, it’s different?”
“Completely different, I presume.”
“So,” I said, “if the men’s or women’s kind is manifestly superior in relation to
any art or other pursuit, won’t we claim that this needs to be given over to that one of
the two? But if they apparently differ only in that the female bears the young and the
male mounts the female, we’ll claim instead that it hasn’t yet been demonstrated in
any way that a woman differs from a man in respect to what we’re talking about, and
we’ll still believe that our guardians and the women with them ought to pursue the
same activities.”
“Rightly so,” he said.
“Now after this, don’t we invite the one who says the opposite to teach us this
very thing, what art or what pursuit it is, among those involved in the setup of the city,
for which the nature of a woman is not the same as but different from that of a man?”
“That’s the just thing to do, anyway.”
“And perhaps someone else as well might say the very thing you were saying a
little while ago, that it’s not easy to say anything adequate on the spot, but not hard if
someone has been considering it.”
“He would say that.”
“Then do you want us to ask the person who contradicts this sort of thing to follow
us, if we somehow show him that no pursuit related to the running of a city is uniquely
for a woman?”
“Certainly.”
“‘Come on then,’ we’ll say to him, ‘answer: is this the way you meant that one per-
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