Page:The Story of Philosophy.pdf/66

 from the egoism of family; they are not to be narrowed to the anxious acquisitiveness of the prodded husband; they are to be devoted not to a woman but to the community. Even their children shall not be specifically or distinguishably theirs; all children of guardians shall be taken from their mothers at birth and brought up in common; their particular parentage will be lost in the scuffle (460). All the guardian- mothers will care for all the guardian-children; the brother- hood of man, within these limits, will graduate from phrase to fact; every boy will be a brother to every other boy, every girl a sister, every man a father, and every woman a mother.

But whence will these women come? Some, no doubt, the guardians will woo out of the industrial or military classes; others will have become, by their own right, members of the guardian class. For there is to be no sex barrier of any kind in this community; least of all in education—the girl shall have the same intellectual opportunities as the boy, the same chance to rise to the highest positions in the state. When Glaucon objects (453 f) that this admission of woman to any office, provided she has passed the tests, violates the principle of the division of labor, he receives the sharp reply that divi- sion of labor must be by aptitude and ability, not by sex; if a woman shows herself capable of political administration, let her rule; if a man shows himself to be capable only of washing dishes, let him fulfil the function to which Providence has as- signed him.

Community of wives does not mean indiscriminate mating; rather there is to be strict eugenic supervision of all repro- ductive relations. The argument from the breeding of animals here starts its wandering career: if we get such good results in breeding cattle selectively for qualities desired, and from breeding only from the best in each generation, why should we not apply similar principles to the matings of mankind? (459). For it is not enough to educate the child properly; he must be properly born, of select and healthy ancestry; "education should begin before birth" (Laws, 789).