No
doubt, the State could establish public nurseries and infant schools,
and provide a staff of nurses and governesses, more scientific
educators than even the normal parent; but who, that has not been most
unhappy in his origin, would wish his own infancy to have been reared
in such a place? What certificated stranger can supply for a mother's
love?
9. The second good of marriage is the _mutual faith_ of the partners.
Plato never made a greater mistake than when he wrote that "the female
sex differs from the male in mankind only in this, that the one bears
children, while the other begets them;" and consequently that "no
occupation of social life belongs to a woman because she is a woman,
or to a man because he is a man, but capacities are equally
distributed in both sexes, and woman naturally bears her share in all
occupations, and man his share, only that in all woman is weaker than
man." (_Republic_, 454 D; 455 D.) Over against this we must set
Aristotle's correction: "Cohabitation among human kind is not for the
mere raising of children, but also for the purposes of a partnership
in life: for from the first the offices of man and woman are distinct
and different: thus they mutually supply for one another, putting
their several advantages into the common stock.
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