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Thus far the first section of the play. The second part, which is very inferior, attempts to show the working of the new system. Praxagora disappears, and the characters are mere mechanical figures. A man, A; a man, B; a young man; a young woman; three old women. The scenes are coarse and uninteresting, nor is the prosiness of the dialogue relieved by any of the vivid touches of humour which mark the poet's earlier plays. Finally, this section, like the first, ends with a banquet, given by the State, and open to all.
The Ecclesiazus is plainly inspired by Plato's theories of communism and feminism as we have them now in the Republic and the Laws. A further example of the connection between the comedian and the philosopher is the Aristophanic tale of the origin of sex in Plato's Symposium. The story---a Platonic myth with a difference---is so good a specimen both of Aristophanes' humour and of the gay fashion in which the Greeks anticipate modern science that it is a pity its length prevents quotation.
In ancient days [according to Aristophanes] there were not two sexes but three, the children of the sun, the earth, and the moon. Men were round in shape, with four feet and hands, two faces, and they were able both to walk and to roll. In the pride of their strength they rebelled against heaven, and Zeus cut them in twain. Apollo was bidden to heal the places, but the two halves pined one for the other, and so in pity the god turned their bodies round, and men became in shape such as we see them now.
There are many other details, but the most striking point in the story is the recognition of the original identity of sex. The man and the woman are not separate and opposite, but rather complementary halves of one organism, which once included both; they are a divided whole, and that is why men and women yearn one for the other. How far the tale is Aristophanes' invention, how far Plato's, cannot be decided, but the doctrine of the identity of sex-qualification is the common possession of all the Socratic Circle, and forms as clearly the basis of Plato's serious philosophy as it does of the humorous apologue of Aristophanes.
Plato differs from most of the Socratic Circle in that he is, above all things, a visionary and a theorist. He is essentially a masculine genius (with him we hear nothing of wife and children), and he lacks that grip of reality which the natural feminist, Euripides, instinctively possesses. He regarded the condition of society in his native city with a mixture of dislike and contempt, and he saw that the main cause of this condition was the indifference to women and children which the ordinary Athenian prided himself on displaying. In his feminism and his educational reforms, Plato is deeply influenced by Spartan teaching, but the main structure is his own work, based not on any actual experience, but on ideal theory. In this idealism lies both the strength and weakness of his feminist doctrine. He refuses to allow himself to be influenced, as Aristotle after him was influenced, by the actual state of inferiority to which Athenian women had been reduced; but in forming a society which should be the opposite of the degenerate Athens of his day, he is inclined[169] to disregard some of the invincible facts of human nature.
Plato's feminist doctrines are most clearly stated in the fifth book of the Republic and the sixth, seventh, and eighth books of the Laws. These works are accessible to English readers (or, rather, their rough substance is accessible, for we can never reproduce the delicate music of Plato's prose, and his subtle irony evaporates in English) in Jowett's translation, and in the excellent version of the Republic by Davies and Vaughan. But it may be convenient to give a brief summary of his argument.
In the fifth book of the Republic the ideal State is being discussed, and the rule ('among friends everything is common property') has been laid down. It has, moreover, been made applicable to wives and children, for Plato at first hardly escapes from the fallacy that a man's wife is as much a piece of property as a dog or a table. The organization of the communistic rgime in detail then comes up for consideration, but it is unanimously resolved that the question of community of women is of vital importance and must be explained at once. The philosopher accordingly, with some pretended reluctance, begins with a prayer to Nemesis---'I am on a slippery road, and fear lest missing my footing I drag my[170] friends down with me'---and thus approaches his subject:
'The aim of our theory was, I believe, to make our men, as it were, guardians of a flock?'
'Yes.'
'Let us keep on the same track and give corresponding rules for the propagation of the species, and for rearing the young; and let us observe whether we find them suitable or not.'
'How do you mean?'
'Thus. Do we think that the females of watch-dogs ought to guard the flock along with the males, and hunt with them, and share in all their other duties; or that the females ought to stay at home, because they are disabled by having to breed and rear the cubs, while the males are to labour and be charged with all the care of the flocks?'
'We expect them to share in whatever is to be done; only we treat the females as the weaker, and the males as the stronger.'
'Is it possible to use animals for the same work if you do not give them the same training and education?'
'It is not.'
'If, then, we are to employ the women in the same duties as the men, we must give them the same instructions?'
'Yes.'
'To the men we give music and gymnastic.'
'Yes.'
'Then we must train the women also in the same two arts, giving them, besides, a military education and treating them in the same way as the men.'
The professional humorist is then requested to refrain from the obvious jokes suggested by the idea[171] of women stripped for exercise or old ladies practising athletics, and to remember that all such things are purely matters of custom. The real question is whether the nature of the human female is such as to enable her to share in all the employments of the male, or whether she is wholly unequal to any, or equal to some and not to others; and, if so, to which class military service belongs. Women certainly are different from men, but we must not be misled by the word 'different.' A bald-headed man is different from a long-haired man, but he may be just as good a cobbler, or a statesman. So women differ from men in the part they play in the propagation of the species; but that difference does not affect the question as to whether men and women should engage in the same pursuits. The argument of the adaptability of the sexes to various occupations is discussed, and this point is reached:
'I conclude then, my friend, that none of the occupations which comprehend the ordering of a State belong to woman as woman, nor yet to man as man; but natural gifts are to be found here and there in both sexes alike; and, so far as her nature is concerned, the woman is admissible to all pursuits as well as the man: though in all of them the woman is weaker than the man.'
'Precisely so.'
'Shall we, then, appropriate all virtues to men and none to women?'
'How can we?'
'On the contrary, we shall hold, I imagine, that one woman may have talents for medicine, and another be without them; and that one may be musical and another unmusical?'
'Undoubtedly.'
'And shall we not also say, that one woman may have qualifications for gymnastic exercises and for war, and another be unwarlike and without a taste for gymnastics?'
'I think we shall.'
'Again, may there not be a love of knowledge in one, and a distaste for it in another? And may not one be spirited, and another spiritless?'
'True again.'
'If that be so, there are some women who are fit, and others who are unfit, for the office of guardians. For were not those the qualities we selected, in the case of men, as marking their fitness for that office?'
'Yes, they were.'
'Then, as far as the guardianship of a state is concerned, there is no difference between the natures of the man and of the woman, but only various degrees of weakness and strength?'
'Apparently there is none.'
'Then we shall have to select duly qualified women also to share in the life and official labours of the duly qualified men; since we find that they are competent to the work, and of kindred nature with the men.'
