Book V, 449–456

449a “Then I call a city and constitution of this kind good and right, and a man of this kind as well. The others I call bad and mistaken, if this one is right—both in the governance of cities and in the formation of the character of individual souls. They fall into four kinds of vice.”

“What kinds?” he asked.

I was about to describe them in sequence, as each seemed to me to 449b pass into the next. But Polemarchus, who sat a little farther from Adeimantus, stretched out his hand and took hold of his cloak high by the shoulder. He drew Adeimantus toward him, leaned forward himself, and spoke in a low voice. We heard nothing else he said, but we did hear this: “Shall we let him go, then, or what shall we do?”

“Certainly not,” said Adeimantus, now speaking aloud.

“And what is it,” I asked, “that you will not let go?”

“You,” he said. 449c

“Why, exactly?” I asked.

“You seem to be taking the easy way out,” he said, “and stealing away a whole part of the argument, no small one, to avoid going through it. You thought you could escape notice by saying offhand that, as to women and children, everyone knows that friends will have all things in common.”

“But was I not right, Adeimantus?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “But that ‘right,’ like everything else, needs an account of what form their community will take; there could be many forms. 449d So do not leave out the one you mean. We have long been waiting, expecting you at some point to mention how children will be conceived and, once born, how they will be raised, and the whole community of women and children that you speak of. We think that whether this is conducted rightly or wrongly makes a great difference to the constitution as a whole. Now that you are turning to another constitution without adequately explaining this one, we have resolved—as you heard— 450a not to let you go until you have discussed all this as you did the rest.”

“And count me a party to that vote,” said Glaucon.

“Indeed, Socrates,” said Thrasymachus, “you may consider it our unanimous decision.”

“What a thing you have done,” I said, “by laying hold of me! What a vast argument you are setting in motion again about the constitution, as if from the beginning. I was glad to think I had already covered it, and would have been content if someone had accepted things as they were stated then and let them stand. In calling these questions up 450b now, you do not know what a swarm of arguments you are rousing. I saw it then and passed them by, for fear they would cause a great deal of trouble.”

“What?” said Thrasymachus. “Do you think these men came here now to pour gold, rather than to listen to arguments?”

“Yes,” I said, “but only arguments of a reasonable length.”

“For sensible people, Socrates,” said Glaucon, “a whole lifetime is a reasonable measure for listening to arguments of this kind. Never mind us: do not tire of explaining, as you see fit, the matter we ask about—what community of women and children our guardians are to have, and how the young are to be brought up 450c in that period between birth and education, which seems the most laborious of all. Try to tell us how it should be managed.”

“It is not easy, my fortunate friend,” I said, “to explain. It raises even more doubts than the matters we discussed before. One may doubt whether the proposals are possible, and even if they were perfectly possible, one would still doubt whether they are best. 450d That is why I hesitate to touch them, my dear companion, for fear the argument might seem a wishful dream.”

“Do not hesitate,” he said. “Your listeners are neither foolish nor incredulous nor hostile.”

“My excellent friend,” I said, “you say that, I suppose, to encourage me?”

“I do.”

“Then you are doing precisely the opposite,” I said. “If I trusted myself to know what I was saying, the encouragement would be apt: before wise and friendly people, speaking truths one knows about the greatest and 450e dearest matters is safe and heartening. But to put forth arguments while doubting and searching, as I am doing, 451a is frightening and precarious—not because I fear making myself ridiculous; that is childish—but because, if I slip from the truth, I shall fall and drag my friends down with me in a matter where a fall is least allowable. I bow before Adrasteia, Glaucon, for what I am about to say. I hope that unintentionally killing someone is a lesser wrong than deceiving anyone about what is fine, good, and just in our institutions. Such a risk is better taken among enemies than 451b friends. So much for your fine encouragement.”

Glaucon laughed. “But Socrates,” he said, “if we suffer any injury from your argument, we acquit you as we would of a killing: you shall be innocent, and no deceiver of ours. Take heart and speak.”

“Well,” I said, “according to the law a man acquitted of killing is innocent too. If that holds there, it likely holds here as well.”

“Then speak, at least on that account,” he said.

“I must now say in reverse order,” I said, “what perhaps 451c I should have said in its proper sequence then. But perhaps it is fitting, after bringing the men's drama fully to its end, to bring on the women's drama next, especially since you call for it so insistently. For people born and educated as we have described, there is, to my mind, no right way to possess and employ women and children except by following the course we first set out on. We undertook in our argument, I think, to appoint the men as guardians of a herd.”

“Yes.” 451d

“Let us follow that course, then, giving them a comparable way of breeding and upbringing, and consider whether it suits us.”

“How?” he asked.

“Like this. Do we think the female guard dogs ought to guard what the males guard, hunt alongside them, and share in all their work? Or should the females stay at home, unable to act because they bear and nurse their puppies, while the males do the work and take all responsibility for the flocks? 451e”

“Let them share in everything,” he said, “though we employ the females as weaker and the males as stronger.”

“Can one employ an animal for the same tasks,” I asked, “without giving it the same nurture and training?”

“No.”

“If, then, we are to employ women for the same tasks as men, we must teach them the same things.”

452a “Yes.”

“And music and physical training were given to the men.”

“Yes.”

“Then women too must be given both these arts, as well as the practice of war, and be employed in the same way.”

“That seems likely, from what you say.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “much of what we are saying would appear ridiculous by present custom if put into practice as proposed.”

“Very much so.”

“And what,” I asked, “seems most ridiculous to you? Plainly it is women exercising naked in the wrestling grounds with 452b men—not only the young but the older women too, just like the old men at the gymnasiums who, wrinkled and no longer pleasing to the eye, nevertheless love their exercise.”

“By Zeus,” he said, “under present conditions it would certainly look ridiculous.”

“Yet since we have begun this discussion,” I said, “we must not fear the jokes of the wits, whatever they might say about such a change, whether in exercise, 452c in music, or above all in bearing arms and riding horses.”

“You are right,” he said.

“But now that we have begun, we must press on toward the hardest part of the law, asking those jesters to be serious rather than play their customary part. Let us remind them that not long ago the Greeks thought it shameful and ridiculous for men to be seen naked, as most non-Greeks do now. When first the Cretans, and then the Spartans, began exercising naked, 452d the wits of the day could make comedy of it all. Do you not think so?”

“I do.”

“But once experience showed, I think, that stripping was better than covering up for all these activities, the ridicule visible to the eyes was swept away by the excellence disclosed in reason. That showed how foolish a person is to consider anything laughable except what is bad, and how a man who sets out to make people laugh, fixing his gaze on any sight but that of folly 452e and vice as his object of ridicule, takes seriously some standard of beauty other than the good.”

“Quite so,” he said.

“Must we not first agree about this proposal, then—whether it is possible or not—and allow anyone who wants to challenge it, whether in play or in earnest, to dispute whether 453a the female human nature can share in every task of the male sex, in none at all, or in some but not others? And to which of these does warfare belong? Would that not be the fairest way to begin, and likely to bring us to the fairest conclusion?”

“By far,” he said.

“Then shall we ourselves take the opposing side,” I asked, “on behalf of others, so that their case is not besieged without a defender? 453b”

“Nothing prevents it.”

“Let us say on their behalf: ‘Socrates and Glaucon, no one else need dispute with you. When you began founding the city you were founding, you agreed that each individual, according to nature, should do the one work proper to him.’”

“We did agree, I think. How could we deny it?”

“‘And does not a woman differ greatly from a man in nature?’”

“Of course she does.”

“‘Then ought not each be assigned different work 453c appropriate to their own nature?’”

“Certainly.”

“‘How can you fail now, and contradict yourselves by saying that men and women ought to do the same things when their natures are so far apart? What defense can you offer for this, my remarkable friend?’”

“Not an easy one to give on the spot,” he said. “But I shall ask you—I am asking you—to explain the argument in our defense, whatever it may be.”

“These, Glaucon,” I said, “and many other objections 453d of the kind were what I foresaw long ago. I feared them, and hesitated to touch the law concerning the possession and upbringing of women and children.”

“By Zeus,” he said, “it does not look easy.”

“No,” I said. “But here is the fact: whether a person falls into a little swimming pool or into the middle of the greatest sea, he still has to swim.”

“Certainly.”

“So we too must swim and try to save ourselves from this argument, hoping some dolphin may take us on its back or that some other unlikely rescue may come. 453e”

“So it seems,” he said.

“Come, then,” I said, “let us see whether we can find a way out. We agree that different natures should undertake different work, and that women and men have different natures; yet we now say that these different natures should undertake the same work. That is the charge against us?”

“Exactly.”

454a “How formidable, Glaucon,” I said, “is the power of the art of contradiction!”

“Why?”

“Because,” I said, “many people seem to me to stumble into it without knowing it. They think they are engaging in dialogue, not quarreling, because they cannot examine what is said by dividing it into kinds. Instead they chase after contradictions in the bare words, using contention rather than dialectic with one another.”

“Many people do fall into that condition,” he said. “But is it aimed at us now? 454b”

“Absolutely,” I said. “We seem to be falling unwittingly into contradiction ourselves.”

“How?”

“We cling to the phrase ‘different natures must not have the same pursuits’ with great boldness and contentiousness, yet we have never examined what kind of sameness or difference of nature we meant, or with reference to what, when we assigned different pursuits to different natures and the same pursuits to the same nature.”

“No,” he said, “we did not examine it. 454c”

“So it seems we are free to ask ourselves whether bald men and long-haired men have the same nature or opposite natures. And after agreeing that their natures are opposite, if bald men make shoes, we can forbid long-haired men to do so; or if the long-haired make shoes, forbid the others.”

“That would be absurd,” he said.

“Is it absurd,” I asked, “for any reason but this: at that time we did not mean sameness and difference of nature in every respect, but attended only to the kind of difference and likeness 454d relevant to the pursuits themselves? For example, we said that a man with the aptitude for medicine and a woman with the aptitude for medicine have the same nature in soul. Do you not agree?”

“I do.”

“But someone with an aptitude for medicine and someone with an aptitude for carpentry have different natures?”

“Surely.”

“Then,” I said, “if the male and female sexes appear to differ with regard to some art or other pursuit, we shall say each should be assigned that pursuit accordingly. But if they differ only in that the female bears children 454e and the male begets them, we shall say that this in no way proves that women and men differ with respect to the matter we are discussing. We shall still believe our male guardians and their women should follow the same pursuits.”

“And rightly,” he said.

“Then next we ask the person who says otherwise 455a to teach us precisely in what art or pursuit involved in the ordering of a city the nature of woman is not the same as man's, but different.”

“That is fair.”

“Perhaps someone else might say what you said a little while ago: it is not easy to give a satisfactory answer at once, but after consideration it is not difficult.”

“He might.”

“Then shall we ask our opponent to follow along 455b as we try to show him that there is no pursuit peculiar to women in the government of a city?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“‘Come, answer us,’ we shall say to him. ‘Was this what you meant by saying one person is naturally suited to a task and another unsuited: that one learns something easily and the other with difficulty; that after a little teaching one makes many discoveries in the subject learned, while the other, even after much teaching and practice, cannot retain what was taught; and that for one the body's powers sufficiently serve the mind, while for the other they hinder it? 455c Are there any qualities other than these by which you distinguish the naturally suited from the unsuited for each task?’”

“No one,” he said, “would name others.”

“Do you know anything practiced by human beings in which the male sex does not possess all these qualities to a greater degree than the female? Need we take the time to speak of weaving, making cakes, and preparing boiled dishes, where the female sex is supposed to excel, and where its defeat would be most laughable of all? 455d”

“You speak the truth,” he said. “One sex is, broadly speaking, surpassed by the other in everything. Yet many women are better than many men at many things; in general, however, it is as you say.”

“So, my friend, there is no pursuit among those who govern a city that belongs to a woman because she is a woman, or to a man because he is a man. Natural capacities are distributed alike among both creatures, and by nature a woman shares in all pursuits, 455e as a man does; though in all of them a woman is weaker than a man.”

“Certainly.”

“Shall we then assign everything to men and nothing to women?”

“How could we?”

“For we will say, I think, that one woman has a gift for medicine and another has not, one is musical by nature and another without music.”

“Certainly.”

456a “And is not one skilled in exercise and war, while another is unwarlike and has no love of exercise?”

“So I think.”

“What of a lover of wisdom and a hater of it? One has spirit, another none?”

“That too.”

“Then one woman has the nature of a guardian and another does not. Did we not select men with such a nature to be guardians?”

“We did.”

“So a woman and a man may have the same nature for guarding a city, except that the one is weaker and the other stronger.”

“So it appears. 456b”

“Women of that kind, then, must be chosen to live with men of that kind and guard alongside them, since they are capable and kindred to the men in nature.”

“Certainly.”

“And should not the same pursuits be given to the same natures?”

“They should.”

“So we have come round to where we started and agree that giving music and physical training to the women of the guardians is not against nature.”

“Not at all.”

“Then the law we laid down was neither impossible nor a mere wish, 456c since we established it in accordance with nature. Rather, the practices that now oppose it seem more contrary to nature.”

“So it seems.”

“And our inquiry was whether our proposals were possible and best?”

“It was.”

“We have agreed that they are possible?”

“Yes.”

“Next we must agree that they are best?”

“Plainly.”

“To make a woman a guardian, it will not be one education that makes our men guardians and another that makes our women, 456d especially when it takes up the same nature in both?”

“It will not.”

“What is your opinion on this?”

“On what?”

“Do you think to yourself that one man is better and another worse? Or do you consider all men alike?”

“Not at all.”

“In the city we are founding, which men do you think we have made better: the guardians, who received the education we described, or the shoemakers, trained in shoemaking?”

“An absurd question,” he said.

“I understand,” I said. “And are the guardians not the best of the citizens? 456e”

“By far.”

“And will these women not be the best of women?”

“By far, in their turn,” he said.

“Is anything better for a city than to have women and men who are as excellent as possible?”

“Nothing.”

“And music and physical training, provided as we have

449a “So I call a city and constitution like this good and right, and I say the same of a man like this. If this one is right, the others are bad and mistaken, both in the government of cities and in the character formed in individual souls. They fall into four kinds of failure.”

“What kinds?” he asked.

I was about to list them in order, as each seemed 449b to develop from the one before it. But Polemarchus, who was sitting a little farther from Adeimantus, reached out and caught his cloak high up near the shoulder. He pulled him closer, leaned forward, and whispered something. We heard only this: “Are we going to let him off, or what?”

“Certainly not,” Adeimantus said, now speaking loudly.

“What is it you won't let go?” I asked.

“You,” he said. 449c

“Why me?” I asked.

“We think you're taking the easy way out,” he said. “You're leaving out a whole part of the argument, and not a small one, so you won't have to explain it. You thought you could slip by with the casual remark that, as everyone knows, friends will share their women and children.”

“But isn't that right, Adeimantus?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “But as with everything else, we need an explanation of what ‘right’ means here. How will they share? There are many possibilities. 449d Don't leave out the one you mean. We've been waiting for you to say something about having children: how they'll be conceived, how they'll be raised after birth, and the whole arrangement you describe for sharing women and children. We think whether this is done rightly or wrongly makes a very great difference to the whole constitution. Now you're moving to another kind of constitution before explaining these matters enough. So we've decided—as you heard—450a not to let you go until you explain all this, as you explained the rest.”

“Count my vote with theirs,” Glaucon said.

“You may take it as a unanimous decision, Socrates,” Thrasymachus said.

“Look what you've done by stopping me,” I said. “You've reopened a huge argument about the constitution, as if we were starting over. I was glad to think I'd finished it and would have been happy if someone accepted what I'd said then. By calling for this discussion 450b you don't realize what a swarm of arguments you're stirring up. I saw that coming and skipped it earlier so it wouldn't cause so much trouble.”

“What?” said Thrasymachus. “Do you think these people came here to smelt gold, rather than listen to arguments?”

“Yes,” I said, “but arguments of a reasonable length.”

“For sensible people, Socrates,” said Glaucon, “a whole lifetime is a reasonable length for hearing arguments like these. Don't worry about us. Don't tire of answering our questions. Tell us what you think the guardians' sharing of women and children will mean, and how children will be raised 450c while still young, in the time between birth and education. That seems to be the most difficult period. Try to explain how it ought to work.”

“It isn't easy, my friend,” I said. “It raises even more doubts than the matters we've already discussed. People may doubt that these proposals are possible. And even if they could be put into practice, people would also doubt that they would be best. 450d That's why I'm reluctant to take this up. I'm afraid the argument will sound like wishful thinking, my dear friend.”

“Don't hesitate,” he said. “Your audience isn't foolish, skeptical, or hostile.”

“My good friend,” I said, “are you saying that to encourage me?”

“I am,” he said.

“Then you're doing exactly the opposite,” I said. “If I were sure I knew what I was talking about, that comfort would help. It's safe and encouraging to speak what you know is true among sensible friends about subjects that matter greatly to you. 450e But it's frightening and dangerous to make arguments while still unsure and searching, as 451a I'm doing now. I'm not afraid of being laughed at—that would be childish. I'm afraid that if I miss the truth, I'll fall and pull my friends down with me over matters where mistakes matter most. I bow to Adrasteia, Glaucon, for what I'm about to say. I hope it's a lesser offense to kill someone unintentionally than to deceive people about what is good, fine, and just in our laws. That risk would be better taken among enemies than 451b among friends. So much for your encouragement!”

Glaucon laughed. “Socrates,” he said, “if your argument does us any harm, we release you from responsibility, as we would from a charge of murder. You'll be innocent, not a deceiver of us. So take courage and speak.”

“But someone who has been acquitted of murder is innocent there too, according to the law,” I said. “If that's true there, it should be true here.”

“On that basis, go ahead,” he said.

“Then I must go back now,” I said, “and say what perhaps should have come next before. 451c But maybe it's right to finish the women's drama after completing the men's drama, especially since you've called on me to do it. In my opinion, people with the nature and upbringing we've described have no other right way to possess and employ women and children than to follow the course we set at the start. We tried in our argument to make the men guardians of a herd.”

“Yes.” 451d

“Then let's carry through a similar approach to their breeding and upbringing and see whether it suits us.”

“How?” he asked.

“Like this. Do we think the female watchdogs should guard the same things as the males, hunt alongside them, and do everything else together? Or should the females stay inside the house, unable to do the work because they bear and feed puppies, while the males work and take all responsibility for the flocks?” 451e

“They should do everything together,” he said. “But we use the females as the weaker animals and the males as the stronger.”

“Can you use any animal for the same work,” I asked, “without giving it the same feeding and training?”

“No.”

“So if women are to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.”

452a “Yes.”

“And the men were given training in music and physical exercise.”

“Yes.”

“So women must have these two kinds of training, as well as training for war, and must be employed in the same way.”

“That follows from what you say,” he said.

“Perhaps,” I said, “if we do what we're proposing, much of it will look ridiculous because it goes against custom.”

“It certainly will,” he said.

“What looks most ridiculous to you?” I asked. “Clearly it's women exercising naked in the training grounds with 452b the men. And not just young women, but older ones too, like old men at the gym who love exercising even when they're wrinkled and no longer pleasant to look at.”

“By Zeus,” he said, “that would look ridiculous, at least by present standards.”

“But since we've begun this discussion,” I said, “we mustn't fear the jokes witty people will make about such a change, whether in physical 452c training, music, or, most of all, the handling of weapons and the riding of horses.”

“You're right,” he said.

“Now that we've started, we must tackle the hardest part of this law. We must ask these people to be serious rather than make jokes, and remind them that it wasn't long ago that Greeks thought it shameful and ridiculous to see naked men, as most non-Greeks still do. When the Cretans first began exercising naked, followed by the Spartans, 452d the clever people of that day were free to mock all of it. Don't you think so?”

“Yes.”

“But when experience showed that undressing was better than covering up for these activities, reason revealed what was best and the apparent absurdity disappeared. That showed that a person is foolish to find anything funny except what is bad. Anyone who tries to make people laugh at something other than the sight of foolishness 452e and badness is also taking something other than goodness as the standard for what is beautiful and worth taking seriously.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Then shouldn't we first agree to ask whether these proposals are possible? Let's allow anyone, whether joking or serious, to dispute whether 453a female human nature can share all the work of males, none of it, or some work but not the rest. And which kind of work does warfare belong to? Isn't that the best way to begin, and most likely to lead us to the best conclusion?”

“Very much so,” he said.

“Then would you like us to argue against ourselves on behalf of the others,” I asked, “so their side isn't attacked with no one there to defend it?” 453b

“There's nothing to stop us,” he said.

“Let's say on their behalf: ‘Socrates and Glaucon, you don't need others to challenge you. When you first established your city, you yourselves agreed that each person should do the one job naturally suited to them.’”

“We agreed to that, I think. How could we not?”

“‘Isn't a woman by nature very different from a man?’”

“Of course she is.”

“‘Then shouldn't each be assigned a different job 453c suited to their different nature?’”

“Yes.”

“‘Then aren't you now contradicting yourselves when you say men and women should do the same jobs, although their natures differ so much? What can you say in your defense, my remarkable friend?’”

“It's not easy to answer on the spot,” he said. “But I ask you—I'm asking you now—to explain the argument for our side, whatever it is.”

“These are the problems, Glaucon,” I said, “and there are many more like them. I saw them coming long ago, 453d and that's why I was afraid to take up the law about the possession and upbringing of women and children.”

“By Zeus,” he said, “it certainly doesn't seem easy.”

“No,” I said. “But whether someone falls into a small pool or into the middle of the greatest sea, they still have to swim.”

“Certainly.”

“Then we too must swim and try to save ourselves from this argument. Perhaps a dolphin will carry us, or some other unlikely rescue will come along.” 453e

“So it seems,” he said.

“Let's see if we can find a way out,” I said. “We agree that different natures should have different occupations, and that a woman's nature differs from a man's. Yet we now say those different natures should have the same occupations. Is that the charge against us?”

“Exactly.”

454a “What great power the art of contradiction has, Glaucon!” I said.

“Why?”

“Because many people seem to fall into it without knowing it,” I said. “They think they're having a real discussion when they're merely quarreling. They cannot examine what's said by separating it into its kinds. Instead, they chase a contradiction in the words themselves. They argue with each other rather than talk things through.”

“That happens to many people,” he said. “But is that what we're doing now?” 454b

“Yes, entirely,” I said. “It looks as if we've stumbled into verbal quarreling ourselves.”

“How?”

“We insist boldly and combatively on the phrase ‘different natures must have different occupations.’ But we never looked at what kind of sameness or difference in nature we meant, or what it was relevant to, when we assigned different jobs to different natures and the same jobs to the same nature.”

“No,” he said, “we didn't examine that.” 454c

“So we could ask ourselves whether bald people have the same nature as people with hair or the opposite nature. Once we agree they're opposites, we could forbid people with hair to make shoes if bald people make them, and forbid bald people if people with hair make them.”

“That would be ridiculous,” he said.

“Isn't it ridiculous,” I said, “because when we laid down the rule, we didn't mean nature's sameness or difference in every respect? We only meant kinds of similarity and difference 454d relevant to the jobs themselves. For instance, we said a man and a woman with minds suited to medicine have the same nature in that respect. Don't you think so?”

“Yes.”

“But someone suited to medicine and someone suited to carpentry have different natures?”

“Surely.”

“Then if the male and female sexes prove to differ in their fitness for any craft or other occupation, we'll assign that work accordingly. But if they differ only in this—that females give birth 454e and males impregnate them—we won't yet have shown that a woman differs from a man in the way relevant to our argument. We'll still think our guardians and their women should have the same occupations.”

“And rightly so,” he said.

“Next, we'll ask our opponent 455a to teach us exactly what craft or work connected with governing a city women and men have different natures for.”

“That would be fair.”

“Someone else might say what you said a moment ago: it's not easy to give an adequate answer right away, but after looking into it, it's not difficult.”

“Yes, someone might say that.”

“Then shall we ask this opponent to follow along 455b while we try to show that no occupation involved in running a city belongs uniquely to women?”

“Certainly.”

“‘Come on, then,’ we'll say to him, ‘answer this. When you called one person naturally suited to a subject and another unsuited, did you mean that one learns it easily and the other with difficulty? That after a little teaching, one can discover a great deal about what was taught, while the other can't even retain what they learned after much teaching and practice? That one's body adequately serves their mind, while 455c the other's body hinders it? Were these the criteria you used to distinguish someone naturally suited to each task from someone unsuited, or were there others?’”

“No one will name others,” he said.

“Do you know any human activity where men as a class don't have all these advantages over women as a class? Must we spend time discussing weaving and the making of cakes and cooked food? Those are the things women are thought good at, 455d and it would be especially laughable if they were beaten at them.”

“You're right,” he said. “One sex generally outdoes the other in just about everything. Still, many women are better than many men at many things. But in general it's as you say.”

“So, my friend, there is no job in governing a city that belongs to a woman because she's a woman, or to a man because he's a man. Natural abilities are distributed among both sexes. By nature a woman can share in every occupation, 455e and a man can too, though women are weaker than men in all of them.”

“Yes.”

“Then shall we assign every task to men and none to women?”

“How could we?”

“Rather, as we'll say, some women are naturally suited to medicine and others aren't. Some are musical and others aren't.”

“Of course.”

456a “And aren't some suited to physical training and war, while others have no taste for exercise or for war?”

“I think so.”

“And some love wisdom, while others hate it? Some are spirited, others not?”

“Yes, that too.”

“Then some women are suited to being guardians, and others aren't. Isn't that just the nature we selected in the men who would be guardians?”

“It is.”

“So women and men have the same sort of nature when it comes to guarding a city, except that one sex is weaker and the other stronger.”

“So it appears.” 456b

“Then women of that kind must be chosen to live with men of that kind and guard alongside them. They're capable of doing so and share their nature.”

“Certainly.”

“And shouldn't we assign the same work to the same natures?”

“Yes.”

“So we've come around to where we began. We agree it isn't against nature to give the guardians' women training in music and physical exercise.”

“Not at all.”

“Then we haven't laid down impossible laws or mere wishes, 456c since our law fits nature. Rather, the present practice contrary to it seems to be more against nature.”

“So it seems.”

“Wasn't our question whether our proposals were possible and best?”

“Yes.”

“And we've agreed they are possible?”

“Yes.”

“Next we must agree whether they're best?”

“Clearly.”

“To make a woman a guardian, then, surely we won't use one education for men and another for women, 456d especially when it is the same nature we're educating?”

“No, we won't.”

“What's your opinion about this?”

“About what?”

“Do you think one man is better than another, or do you consider them all alike?”

“Certainly not all alike.”

“In the city we're founding, which men do you think we've made better: the guardians who receive the education we've described, or the shoemakers trained in shoemaking?”

“That's a ridiculous question,” he said.

“I see,” I said. “Aren't the guardians the best 456e of all the citizens?”

“By far.”

“And won't these women be the best of all the women?”

“By far, they will,” he said.

“Is there anything better for a city than to have the best possible women and men?”

“No.”

“And will the training in music and physical exercise, as