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Last comes the question of children; and here, at least, we need make no criticisms:
It is evident why mothers love their children more than fathers. The procreation of children is the universal function of animals. In the case of other animals, this is the limit of their association; but men and[207] women unite not only for the procreation of children but for the purposes of life. As soon as they unite, a distribution of functions takes place. Some are proper to the husband and others to the wife; hence they supply one another's needs, each contributing to the common stock. Utility and pleasure seem alike to be found in the marriage relationship, but its basis will be virtue, too. Children are a bond of union, and such marriages as are childless are dissolved with comparatively little difficulty.[8]
The Politics begin with a discussion of slavery, and, by an association of ideas natural in Greek society, for Aristotle never attempts to rise above the conditions of life about him, slaves and women are treated together:
He who can foresee with his mind is by nature intended to be lord and master; and he who can work with his body is a subject, and by nature a slave: hence, master and slave have the same interest. Nature, however, has distinguished between the female and the slave. For she is not niggardly; she makes each thing for a single use, and every instrument is best made when intended for one and not for many uses. But among barbarians no distinction is made between women and slaves.
It should be noticed here that the essential quality of the master is not physical strength, but mental capacity; it is the mind and not the body that makes the 'natural' slave, the 'live tool,' as Aristotle defines him. Man and woman, master and slave,[208] these are the foundations of the family. As Hesiod says: 'First a house, then a woman, and then an ox for the plough'; and Aristotle has no difficulty in finding the arrangement right. He puts the question:
Is there any one intended by nature to be a slave, so that for him the condition of slavery is expedient and right; or, rather, is not all slavery a violation of nature?
And gives the immediate reply:
There is no difficulty in answering this question on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary but expedient; from the hour of their birth some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.
The law, he thinks, holds through all nature:
Tame animals have a better nature than wild, and all tame animals are better off when they are ruled by men, for then they are preserved. The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules and the other is ruled; this principle of necessity extends to all mankind. Nature would like to distinguish between the bodies of freemen and slaves; but this does not hold universally.
So the string of assertions goes on, and the discussion closes:
It is clear, therefore, that some men are by nature free and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right.
Having thus justified slavery to his own satisfaction, Aristotle proceeds to deal with household management, which he subdivides into three parts: the rule of a master over slaves, of a father, and of a husband:
A husband and a father rules over wife and children, both free, but the rule differs: over his children it is a royal, over his wife a constitutional rule. For, although there may be exceptions to the order of nature, the male is by nature fitter for command than the female, just as the elder and full-grown is superior to the younger and more immature.
To illustrate his point, Aristotle quotes the saying of Amasis and his foot-pan, a good story, although it does not exactly strengthen the philosopher's position. Amasis was a commoner, who became King of Egypt; to prove to his subjects the essential equality of all matter, he had his metal bath melted down and re-cast as a statue, to which all the people made humble obeisance, although they had treated the foot-pan with contempt. Then Amasis drew his moral: the substance of both bath and statue is the same; there is merely a difference in outward form. 'Of this kind,' says Aristotle, 'is the relation between male and female; but there the inequality is permanent.'
It is the business of household management to ensure excellence, and we are faced at once by a[210] difficulty: can a slave possess virtue? If he has virtue, in what will he differ from a freeman? A similar question may be raised about women and children: ought a woman to be called temperate, brave, and just? Aristotle solves the difficulty thus:
Women and slaves have a sort of virtue, the virtue of the irrational part of the soul. The slave has no deliberate faculty at all; the woman has it, but with her it is inconclusive. The ruler must have moral virtue in perfection; the subject requires only that measure of virtue which is proper to him. Virtue will be common to man and woman, but it will not be the same virtue: e.g., the courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying.
These are hard sayings, and they bring Aristotle into direct conflict with Plato, who, in the Meno, discusses the question whether the virtue of a man and a woman is the same or different, and comes to the conclusion that it is the same. But Aristotle never hesitates to criticise his former teacher, and it is a curious point how far his low estimate of women is not the result of the pupil's unconscious reaction against a master's enthusiasm. A great part of the Politics is, in fact, a criticism of the Republic, and the discussion on slavery, which occupies most of the first book, is followed by a close consideration of Plato's communistic State. The objections raised are of a severely practical nature, e.g.:
If the women are shared in common, and private property is retained, the men will see to the fields; but who will see to the house?
And again:
Two virtues are destroyed in the communistic State; first, temperance towards women (for it is an honourable action to abstain from another man's wife for temperance' sake); secondly, liberality in the matter of property. The legislation of such a State may have a specious appearance of benevolence, but such evils as there are in property are due to a cause that laws cannot eradicate: the wickedness of human nature. Indeed, we see that there is much more quarrelling among those who have all things in common, though there are not many of them, than there is among the vast majority of men who keep to private property.
The criticism, however, although acute on points of detail, does not touch the essentials of feminism, and, in the Politics, Aristotle often reveals himself unconsciously as Plato's former disciple. His remarks on education are based very largely, although he makes no acknowledgment, on his master's teaching and scarcely harmonise with his own views on women. The concluding sentences of the first book, for example, are distinctly Platonic in their tone:
