which had been started by Aspasia in her
salon, which had been discussed by Socrates and the Socratics,
especially AEschines, and which had brought about a battle royal between
the dramatists Euripides and Aristophanes, naturally called for
scientific treatment at the hands of the philosophers. The works of
Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon accordingly devote much space to the
consideration of the Woman Question. The female sex, hitherto
"accustomed to live cowed and in obscurity,"--as Plato puts it,--justly
claimed more favorable conditions; and the philosophers who endeavored
to bring about a better social status asserted that woman deserved
proper recognition at the hands of men.

Plato had taken seriously to heart the lessons of the Peloponnesian War.
He was keenly sensitive to the evils of democracy as then existent, and
recognized the need of governmental and social reform. He felt that in
the disregard of women at least half the citizen population had been
neglected, and we have in his works the strongest assertion of the
equality of the sexes.

"And so," he says, in one of his dialogues, "in the administration of a
State, neither a woman as a woman nor a man as a man has any special
function, but the gifts of nature are equally diffused in both sexes;
all the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women also, and in all of
these woman is only a lesser man." "Very true." "Then are we to impose
all our enactments on men and none on women?" "That will never do." "One
woman has a gift of healing, another not; one is a musician, another is
not." "Very true." "And one woman has a turn for gymnastic and military
exercises, while another is unwarlike and hates gymnastics." "Beyond
question." "And one woman is a philosopher, and another is an enemy of
philosophy; one has spirit, and another is without spirit." "This is
also true."

From these premises, recognizing the diversity of gifts among women and
the correspondence of their talents with those of men, though less in
degree, Plato affirms that women should receive a training similar to
that accorded to men; to them should be given the same education and
assigned the same duties, though the lighter tasks should fall to them
as being less strong physically.

"There shall be compulsory education," says Plato, in his Laws, "for
females as well as males; they shall both go through the same exercises.
I assert, without fear of contradiction, that gymnastic exercises and
hor