104 PLATO
“Quite so.”
“So are we going to assign all of them to men and none to women?”
“Really, how could we?”
“But we’ll claim, I imagine, that there’s a woman with an aptitude for the medical
art and another without it, and a woman with an aptitude for music and another who’s
unmusical by nature.”
“Of course.”
“Then isn’t there a woman with an aptitude for gymnastic training and warfare,
and one who’s unwarlike and not fond of gymnastic exercise?”
“I imagine so.”
“What else? Is one woman philosophic and another antiphilosophic? Is one spir-
ited and another lacking in spirit?”
“These things are possible too.”
“Then it’s also possible for there to be a woman with an aptitude as a guardian,
and another without one. Wasn’t it that sort of nature we also selected as belonging to
the men with an aptitude for being guardians?”
“That very sort.”
“And therefore the same nature for guardianship of a city belongs to a woman as
to a man, except to the extent that one is weaker or stronger.”
“So it appears.”
“And so women of that sort need to be selected to live together and guard together
with men of that sort, since they’re competent and are akin to them in their nature.”
“Entirely so.”
“And don’t the same pursuits need to be assigned to the same natures?”
“The same ones.”
“Then we’ve come back around to what we said before, and we’re agreed that it’s
not contrary to nature for the women among the guardians to be assigned to music and
gymnastic training.”
“Absolutely so.”
“So we weren’t legislating things that are impossible or like prayers, since we set
down the law in accord with nature. But it seems instead that it’s the things that are done
now, contrary to these, that are done contrary to nature.”
“So it seems.”
“Wasn’t our question whether the things we’d be talking about are possible and
best?”
“It was indeed.”
“And it’s been agreed that they’re possible?”
“Yes.”
“And that they’re best is the thing that needs to be agreed to next?”
“Clearly.”
“Now as for turning out a woman skilled at guardianship, one education won’t
produce men for us and another one women, will it, especially since it gets the same
nature to work with?”
“No other one.”
“Then what’s the state of your opinion about this in particular?”
“About what exactly?”
“About assuming in your own estimation that one man is better and another
worse. Or do you regard them as all alike?”
“Not at all.”456a
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