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From, A. Zimmern, Political Thought,
in R.W. Livingstone (ed.), The Legacy of Greece, Oxford University Press, 1921.
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Page 11
Take a few instances, drawn from Plato, of what I call the Catholic spirit. Perhaps the most difficult and unsettling of all our modern problems is that of the relations between men and women in a society which has granted or is about to grant to women complete equality of rights and opportunities without having effected the corresponding inner revolution of thought and sentiment. Masculine society, in other words, despite a multitude of professions, has not yet admitted, still less assimilated, the educated woman into its ranks. Here is a problem with far reaching and most difficult implications which Plato discussed more than two thousand years ago, but in how different a spirit from so many of the 'feminists' of to-day. Not that he was less 'advanced' in his speculations: he was ready to face all that there was to face and to go a good deal farther in his suggestions of policy than would be regarded as printable in a modern English or American review. But his spirit is throughout perfectly serene and, in the best sense of the word, scientific, so that he can work out his argument to the end without a trace of squeamishness or false modesty. Where shall we find in our modern discussions of women's employment, equal work for equal pay, and the like, the central point so simply and clearly stated as in the following sentence: 'Then, if we find either the male or the female sex excelling the other in any art or other pursuit, we shall say that this particular pursuit must be assigned to one and not to the other; but if we find that the difference simply consists in this, that the female conceives and the male begets, we shall not allow that that goes any way to prove that a woman differs from a man with reference to the subject of which we are speaking, and we shall still consider that our guardians and their wives should follow the same pursuits.' If all our modern discussion were as clean and direct as this, we should have made greater progress in this subject by now. Greek intellectual integrity, and clarity of thought and expression, were not hampered by a festering and obstructive legacy of what it is a libel on a great movement to describe as Puritanism.
Cf. Ancient Greek History and the West * Greek is the higher life of man * Greek History Resources
Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome
A History of Greek Philosophy * Plato Home Page
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/political-theory.asp?pg=11
