Note 5 — Chapter IV · WOMAN IN ANCIENT GREECE

But Plato, the greatest of all the Greeks, redeems the culture of his race. He saw plainly—what we might have expected the more scientific Aristotle to see—that woman’s frailer power of reasoning was simply due to her education. He insisted on the inherent equality of the sexes. Professor Westermarck quotes Plato as saying that “the female sex is inferior to the male,” and represents him as an opponent. But, in putting this phrase into the mouth of Socrates, Plato is merely leading up to the satirical conclusion that we ought, therefore, to impose our laws on men only, and not on women, and he presently adds: “The same education which makes a man a good guardian [governor] will make a woman a good guardian, for their original nature is the same.”[5] There are differences between men and women, but he says that these differences no more affect the capacity for public work than the question whether a cobbler is bald or hairy affects his fitness for mending sandals. He will not even reserve military duties to men, so solid is his conviction of woman’s capacity. In a word, one of the greatest thinkers of Greece, and most treasured writers in all literature, is the most advanced feminist that ever existed.