Part 82 (1/2)
In discussing this higher kind of love both Plato and Xenophon consistently and persistently ignore women, and not only do they ignore them, but they deliberately distinguish between two G.o.ddesses of love, one of whom, the celestial, presides--not over refined love between men and women, as we would say--but over the friends.h.i.+ps between men only, while the feelings toward women are always inspired by the common G.o.ddess of sensual love. In Plato's _Symposium_ (181) this point is made clear by Pausanias:
”The Love who is the offspring of the common Aphrodite is essentially common, and has no discrimination, being such as the meaner sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as well as of youths, and is of the body rather than of the soul.... But the offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived from a mother in whose birth the female has no part,--she is from the male only; this is that love which is of youths, and the G.o.ddess being older, there is nothing of wantonness in her.”
PLATONIC LOVE OF WOMEN
In thus excluding women from the sphere of pure, super-sensual romantic love, Plato shows himself a Greek to the marrow. In the Greek view, to be a woman was to be inferior to man from every point of view--even personal beauty. Plato's writings abound in pa.s.sages which reveal his lofty contempt for women. In the _Laws_ (VI., 781) he declares that ”women are accustomed to creep into dark places, and when dragged out into the light they will exert their utmost powers of resistance, and be far too much for the legislator.” While unfolding, in _Timaeus_ (91), his theory of the creation of man, he says gallantly that ”of the men who came into the world, those who were cowards or led unrighteous lives may with reason be supposed to have changed into the nature of women in the second generation;” and on another page (42) he puts the same idea even more insultingly by writing that the man
”who lived well during his appointed time was to return and dwell in his native star, and there he would have a blessed existence. But if he failed in attaining this, at the second birth he would pa.s.s into a woman, and if, when in that state of being, he did not desist from evil, he would continually be changed into some brute who resembled him in the evil nature which he had acquired.”
In other words, in Plato's mind a woman ranks half-way between a man and a brute. ”Woman's nature,” he says, ”is inferior to that of men in capacity for virtue” (_Laws_, VI., 781); and his idea of enn.o.bling a woman consists in making her resemble a man, giving her the same education, the same training in athletics and warlike exercises, in wrestling naked with each other, even though the old and ugly would be laughed at (_Republic_, Bk. V.). Fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, will, in his ideal republic, go to war together.
”Let a man go out to war from twenty to sixty years, and for a woman if there appear any need of making use of her in military service, let the time of service be after she shall have brought forth children up to fifty years of age” (_Laws_, VI., 785).
Having thus abolished woman, except as a breeder of sons, Plato proceeds to eliminate marriage and morality. ”The brave man is to have more wives than others, and he is to have first choice in such matters more than others” (_Republic_, V., 468). All wives, however, must be in common, no man having a monopoly of a woman. Nor must there be any choice or preference for individuals. The mothers are to be arranged by officials, who will see that the good pair with the good, the bad with the bad, the offspring of the latter being destroyed, just as is done in the breeding of animals. Maternal and filial love also must be abolished, infants being taken from their mothers and educated in common. Nor must husband and wife remain together longer than is necessary for the perpetuation of the species. This is the only object of marriage in Plato's opinion; for he recommends (_Laws_, VI., 784) that if a couple have no children after being married ten years, they should be ”divorced for their mutual benefit.”
In all history there is not a more extraordinary spectacle than that presented by the greatest philosopher of Greece, proposing in his ideal republic to eliminate every variety of family affection, thus degrading the relations of the s.e.xes to a level inferior in some respects even to that of Australian savages, who at least allow mothers to rear their own children. And this philosopher, the most radical enemy love has ever known--practically a champion of promiscuity--has, by a strange irony of fate, lent his name to the purest and most exalted form of love![307]
SPARTAN OPPORTUNITIES FOR LOVE
Had Plato lived a few centuries earlier he might have visited at least one Greek state where his barbarous ideal of the s.e.xual relations was to a considerable extent realized. The Spartan law-maker Lycurgus shared his views regarding marriage, and had the advantage of being able to enforce them. He, too, believed that human beings should be bred like cattle. He laughed, so Plutarch tells us in his biographic sketch, at those who, while exercising care in raising dogs and horses, allowed unworthy husbands to have offspring. This, in itself, was a praiseworthy thought; but the method adopted by Lycurgus to overcome that objection was subversive of all morality and affection.
He considered it advisable that among worthy men there should be a community of wives and children, for which purpose he tried to suppress jealousy, ridiculing those who insisted on a conjugal monopoly and who even engaged in fights on account of it. Elderly men were urged to share their wives with younger men and adopt the children as their own; and if a man considered another's wife particularly prolific or virtuous he was not to hesitate to ask for her. Bridegrooms followed the custom of capturing their brides. An attendant, after cutting off the bride's hair and putting a man's garment on her, left her alone in the dark, whereupon her bridegroom visited her, returning soon, however, to his comrades. For months--sometimes until after children had been born--the husband would thus be unable to see his wife.
Reading Greek literature in the light of modern science, it is interesting to note that we have in the foregoing account unmistakable allusions to several primitive customs which have prevailed among savages and barbarians in all parts of the world.[308] The Greek writers, ignorant of the revelations of anthropology regarding the evolution of human habits, a.s.sumed such customs to have been originated by particular lawgivers. This was natural enough and pardonable under the circ.u.mstances; but how any modern writer can consider such customs (whether aboriginal or inst.i.tuted by lawgivers) especially favorable to love, pa.s.ses my comprehension. Yet one of the best informed of my critics a.s.sured me that ”in Sparta love was made a part of state policy, and opportunities were contrived for the young men and women to see each other at public games and become enamored.”
As usual in such cases, the writer ignores the details regarding these Spartan opportunities for seeing one another and falling in love, which would have spoiled his argument by indicating what kind of ”love” was in question here.
Plutarch relates that Lycurgus made the girls strip naked and attend certain festivals and dance in that state before the youths, who were also naked. Bachelors who refused to marry were not allowed to attend these dances, which, as Plutarch adds with characteristic Greek navete, were ”a strong incentive to marriage.” The erudite C.O.
Muller, in his history of the Doric race (II., 298), while confessing that in all his reading of Greek books he had not come across a single instance of an Athenian in love with a free-born woman and marrying her because of a strong attachment, declares that Sparta was somewhat different, personal attachments having been possible there because the young men and women were brought together at festivals and dances; but he has the ac.u.men to see that this love was ”not of a romantic nature.”[309]
AMAZONIAN IDEAL OF GREEK WOMANHOOD
Romantic love, as distinguished from friends.h.i.+p, is dependent on s.e.xual differentiation, and the highest phases of romantic love are possible only, as we have seen, where the secondary and tertiary s.e.xual qualities, physical and mental, are highly developed. Now the Spartans, besides maintaining all the love-suppressing customs just alluded to, made special and systematic efforts to convert their women into Amazons devoid of all feminine qualities except such as were absolutely necessary for the perpetuation of the species. One of the avowed objects of making girls dance naked in the presence of men was to destroy what they considered as effeminate modesty. The law which forbade husbands to a.s.sociate with their wives in the daytime prevented the growth of any sentimental, sympathetic attachment between husband and wife. Even maternal feeling was suppressed, as far as possible, Spartan mothers being taught to feel proud and happy if their sons fell in battle, disgraced and unhappy if they survived in case of defeat. The sole object, in brief, of Spartan inst.i.tutions relating to women was to rear a breed of healthy animals for the purpose of supplying the state with warriors. Not love, but patriotism, was the underlying motive of these inst.i.tutions. To patriotism, the most masculine of all virtues, the lives of these women were immolated, and what made it worse was that, while they were reared as men, these women could not share the honors of men. Brought up as warriors, they were still despised by the warriors, who, when they wanted companions.h.i.+p, always sought it in a.s.sociation with comrades of their own s.e.x. In a word, instead of honoring the female s.e.x, the Spartans suppressed and dishonored it. But they brought on their own punishment; for the women, being left in charge of affairs at home during the frequent absence of their warlike husbands and sons, learned to command slaves, and, after the manner of the African Amazons we have read about, soon tried to lord it over their husbands too.
And this utter suppression of femininity, this glorification of the Amazon--a being as repulsive to every refined mind as an effeminate man--has been lauded by a host of writers as emanc.i.p.ation and progress!
”If your reputation for prowess and the battles you have fought were taken away from you Spartans, in all else, be very sure, you have not your inferiors,” exclaims Peleus in the _Andromache_ of Euripides, thus summing up Athenian opinion on Sparta. There was, however, one other respect in which the enemies of Sparta admired her. C.O. Muller alludes to it in the following (II., 304):
”Little as the Athenians esteemed their own women, they involuntarily revered the heroines of Sparta, such as Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas; Lampito, the daughter of Leotychidas, the wife of Archidamus and mother of Agis.”
This is not surprising, for in Athens, as among the Spartans and all other Greeks, patriotism was the supreme virtue, and women could be compared with men only in so far as they had the opportunity and courage to partic.i.p.ate in this masculine virtue. Aristotle appears to have been the only Greek philosopher who recognized the fact that ”each s.e.x has its own peculiar virtues in which the other rejoices;”
yet there is no indication that even he meant by this anything more than the qualities in a woman of being a good nurse and a chaste housemaid.[310] Plato, as we have seen, considered woman inferior to man because she lacked the masculine qualities which he would have liked to educate into her; and this remained the Greek att.i.tude to the end, as we realize vividly on reading the special treatise of Plutarch--who flourished nearly half a thousand years after Plato--_On the Virtues of Women_, in which, by way of proving ”that the virtues of a man and a woman do not differ,” a number of stories are told of heroic deeds, military, patriotic, and otherwise, performed by women.
Greek ideas on womanhood are admirably symbolized in their theology.
Of their four princ.i.p.al G.o.ddesses--using the more familiar Latin names--Juno is a shrew, Venus a wanton, while Minerva and Diana are Amazons or hermaphrodites--masculine minds in female bodies. In Juno, as Gladstone has aptly said, the feminine character is strongly marked; but, as he himself is obliged to admit, ”by no means on its higher side.” Regarding Minerva, he remarks with equal aptness that ”she is a G.o.ddess, not a G.o.d; but she has nothing of s.e.x except the gender, nothing of the woman except the form.” She is the G.o.ddess, among other things, of war. Diana spends all her time hunting and slaughtering animals, and she is not only a perpetual virgin but ascetically averse to love and feminine tenderness--as unsympathetic a being as was ever conceived by human imagination--as unnatural and ludicrous as her devotee, the Hippolytus of Euripides. She is the Amazon of Amazons, and was represented dressed as an Amazon. Of course she is pictured as the tallest of women, and it is in regard to the question of stature that the Greeks once more betray their ultra-masculine inability to appreciate true femininity; as, for example, in the stupid remark of Aristotle _(Eth. Nicom_., IV., 7), [Greek: to kallos en megalo somati, hoi mikroi d' asteioi kai summetroi, kaloi d' ou.]--”beauty consists in a large body; the pet.i.te are pretty and symmetrical, but not beautiful.”[311]
ATHENIAN ORIENTALISM