Thus a slave can have no power
of determination, a woman but a weak one, a child an imperfect one.
Thus also must it necessarily be with respect to moral virtues; all
must be supposed to possess them, but not in the same manner, but as
is best suited to every one's employment; on which account he who is
to govern ought to be perfect in moral virtue, for his business is
entirely that of an architect, and reason is the architect; while
others want only that portion of it which may be sufficient for their
station; from whence it is evident, that although moral virtue is
common to all those we have spoken of, yet the temperance of a man and
a woman are not the same, nor their courage, nor their justice, though
Socrates thought otherwise; for the courage of the man consists in
commanding, the woman's in obeying; and the same is true in other
particulars: and this will be evident to those who will examine
different virtues separately; for those who use general terms deceive
themselves when they say, that virtue consists in a good disposition
of mind, or doing what is right, or something of this sort. They do
much better who enumerate the different virtues as Georgias did, than
those who thus define them; and as Sophocles speaks of a woman, we
think of all persons, that their 'virtues should be applicable to
their characters, for says he,
"Silence is a woman's ornament,"
but it is not a man's; and as a child is incomplete, it is evident
that his virtue is not to be referred to himself in his present
situation, but to that in which he will be complete, and his
preceptor.
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