16 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



strength and with one mind, for thus the state, instead of 

 being a whole, is reduced to a half. ' ' * 



In The Republic he expresses the same idea when he 

 affirms that "the gifts of nature are alike diffused in 

 both" men and women "all the pursuits of men are 

 the pursuits of women. ' ' 2 



These opinions of Socrates and Plato are so at variance 

 with those of their contemporaries, and so contrary to the 

 custom that then obtained of excluding all but free-born 

 hetserae from the advantages of education and culture, that 

 we cannot but think that they were due to the profound 

 influence which had been exercised directly or indirectly 

 by Aspasia on both of these great philosophers. Be this as 

 it may, neither the efforts of Aspasia nor the teachings of 

 Socrates and Plato were able to remove the bars to intel- 

 lectual development from which the women of Greece had 

 so long suffered. A change in customs and laws concern- 

 ing the rigid, oriental seclusion of women did not come 

 until much later, and then it was under a new regime 

 that of the Caesars while complete equality of men and 

 women in school and college was not recognized until long 

 centuries afterward. 



It is interesting to speculate regarding what Greece 

 would have become had she developed her women as she 

 developed her men. Never in the history of the world were 

 there in any one city so many eminent men poets, orators, 

 statesmen, painters, sculptors, architects, philosophers as 

 in Athens, and yet not a single native-born Athenian 

 woman ever attained the least distinction in any depart- 

 ment of art or science or literature. We cannot conceive 

 for a moment that Greece's fertility in great men and 

 barrenness in great women was due to the fact that the 

 mothers of such illustrious men were ordinary housewives 



1 The Dialogues of Plato, Laws, VII, 805, Jowett 's translation, 

 New York, 1892. 



2 Op. cit., The Eepublic, V, 451 et seq. and 466. 



