Page 30 of 38
Plato, indeed, in spite of his idealism, is often very practical, and on the question of marriage his doctrine is most sound.
The simple law of marriage is this: A man must marry before he is thirty-five; if not, he shall be fined and lose all his privileges. Mankind are immortal because they leave children behind them; and for a man to deprive himself of immortality is impiety. He who obeys the law shall be free and pay no fine; but the disobedient shall pay a yearly fine, in order that he may not imagine that his celibacy will bring him ease or profit: moreover, he shall not share in any of the honours which the State gives to the aged.
Marriage is to be regarded as a duty, and 'every man shall follow, not after the marriage which is most pleasing to himself, but after that which is most beneficial to the State.' This cannot be effected by definite regulations, but we should 'try and charm the spirits of men into believing' that their children are of more importance than themselves, and that a child's disposition will depend upon the happy blending of its parents.
Plato realises that children are the State's vital[179] interest, and his concern for them extends to the period before birth. Husband and wife are to consider how they are to produce for the State the best and fairest specimens of children which they can. If proper attention is given to anything, success is certain; and the eugenic system is to be under the definite control of a committee of women, who shall meet every day and spend a third part of the day in ensuring that the regulations for perfect births are duly carried out. Their care is to be expressly extended to the future mothers, for the period of a child's life before birth is equally decisive, and the young wife must be carefully tended, kept from excessive pleasures or pains, and be encouraged to cultivate habits of gentleness, benevolence, and kindness.
Then comes the proper management of infants, and Plato is very convinced of the importance of constant motion for the young child, who in a Greek household was often closely bandaged in swaddling clothes and left to its own resources. He anticipates Aristippus, who, holding that pleasure was the chief end of life, found the best definition of pleasure to be 'a gentle motion,' and he is prepared to make his ideal state for infants at least a pleasant one.
The first principle in relation both to the body and soul of very young children is that nursing and moving about by day and night is good for them all, and that[180] the younger they are the more they will need it. Infants should live, if it were possible, as if they were always rocking at sea. Exercise and motion in the earliest years greatly contribute to create a part of virtue in the soul: the child's virtue is cheerfulness, and good nursing makes a gentle and a cheerful child.
This first period will last till the age of three, when the child will begin to find out its own natural modes of amusement in company with other children: from three to six, boys and girls should live and play together: after six they should separate, and begin to receive instruction.
On the subject of co-education, which may be regarded as the best practical solution for the cure of sex-ignorance, Plato speaks with a rather uncertain voice. His general theory presupposes an identity of training, and the free mingling of boys and girls, young men and women, in sport and work. But he is disturbed by his conviction of the natural badness of boys contrasted with girls:
Of all animals, the boy is the most unmanageable, inasmuch as he has the fountain of reason in him not yet regulated; he is the most insidious, sharp-witted, and insubordinate of creatures; therefore he must be bound with many bridles.
The further difficulty, that constant friendly intercourse between young men and women may lead to undesirable results is discussed at some length in the Laws, p. 835, and the very sensible conclusion is[181] arrived at that a healthy public opinion will be the first result of these natural conditions of comradeship, and that the general sentiment will be the strongest of checks upon undue licence. The importance of example in education and morals is rightly insisted upon:
The best way of training the young is to train yourself at the same time: not to admonish them, but to be always carrying out your own admonitions in practice.
Finally, education is of supreme importance to a country:
The minister of education is the most important officer of State; of all appointments his is the greatest; he will rule according to law, must be fifty years old, and have children of his own, both boys and girls by preference, at any rate one or the other.
These are some of the salient points of Plato's teaching, but a careful reading of the Republic and the Laws will reveal many further issues and many side-lights on the main thesis. Plato does not trouble to be rigorously consistent, and, like Euripides, he does not hesitate at times to play the part of the candid friend, and to point out what he thinks are the natural weaknesses of the female sex. Sometimes he is right, sometimes he is wrong. 'Women,' he says, 'are too prone to secrecy and stealth; they are accustomed to creep into dark places and resist being dragged into the light.'
Here Plato seems to hit the truth. If there is one quality---call it virtue or vice, as you will---which is peculiarly a woman's and not a man's characteristic, it is secretiveness. The result of many centuries of self-suppression, it gives a certain aggravating charm to the female mind, and usually does no particular harm. But it is, perhaps, the chief reason of women's comparative failure in literature. Sincerity in writing is the saving grace, and if a book is not frank, it should never be written. Few women authors resemble Sappho, or Jane Austen, or Mme. Colette in contemporary French literature, who, unlike though they are in the circumstances of their lives, do all make a serious attempt at truth. Most women fail in frankness towards themselves and their readers. George Eliot, Ouida, George Sand (to take another typical and strongly differentiated trio) dissemble their facts as much as they dissemble their names. Like ostriches, they hide their faces under a cloud of words.
To turn from Plato's ideal State to the actual condition of woman's life during the fourth century in Athens, as we have it revealed in the pages of the orators, is like passing from a breezy hillside into a dark, close-shut room. We see the working of the harem system, with all its atmosphere of secrecy and suspicion. The women are closely watched; for it is presumed that they will be unfaithful to their husbands if they can: they live secluded in the women's quarter of the house---the gynconitis---and for any strange man to enter their rooms is a grave impropriety. In Demosthenes, for example, we find it imputed to Androtion, as a proof of unbearable insolence, that in his capacity of tax-collector he forced his way into the women's apartments, and compelled the master of the house to hide under the bed, putting him thus to shame before his womankind. That a wife should appear publicly with her husband at a dinner party, and take a share in men's pleasures, is equally an offence against morality. Nera was known to have sat at dinner with her husband and[184] his friends, and this fact, testified by witnesses, is taken as an obvious proof that she was a woman of abandoned character. The sister of Nicodemus, Isus argues, could not have been legally married, for she was often seen at entertainments with the man she called her husband, and 'wedded wives do not go out to dinner with their husbands, or expect to join in festivities.'
