y of equality, or whether it is, as many
communists say, indispensable to it, we need not here discuss. It is true
that in his Republic almost all the social theories which have been
deduced from the modern proclamation of equality are elaborated. There
was to be a community of property, and also a community of wives and
children. The equality of the sexes was insisted on to the extent of
living in common, identical education and pursuits, equal share in all
labors, in occupations, and in government. Between the sexes there was
allowed only one ultimate difference. The Greeks, as Professor Jowett
says, had noble conceptions of womanhood; but Plato's ideal for the sexes
had no counterpart in their actual life, nor could they have understood
the sort of equality upon which he insisted. The same is true of the
Romans throughout their history.

More than any other Oriental peoples the Egyptians of the Ancient Empire
entertained the idea of the equality of the sexes; but the equality of
man was not conceived by them. Still less did any notion of it exist in
the Jewish state. It was the fashion with the socialists of 1793, as it
has been with the international assemblages at Geneva in our own day, to
trace the genesis of their notions back to the first Christian age. The
far-reaching influence of the new gospel in the liberation of the human
mind and in promoting just and divinely-ordered relations among men is
admitted; its origination of the social and political dogma we are
considering is denied. We do not find that Christ himself anywhere
expressed it or acted on it. He associated with the lowly, the vile, the
outcast; he taught that all men, irrespective of rank or possessions, are
sinners, and in equal need of help. But he attempted no change in the
conditions of society. The "communism" of the early Christians was the
temporary relation of a persecuted and isolated sect, drawn together by
common necessities and dangers, and by the new enthusiasm of
self-surrender. ["The community of goods of the first Christians at
Jerusalem, so frequently cited and extolled, was only a community of use,
not of ownership (Acts iv. 32), and throughout a voluntary act of love,
not a duty (v. 4); least of all, a right which the poorer might assert.
Spite of all this, that community of goods produced a chronic state of
poverty in the church of Jerusalem." (Principles of Political Economy. By
William Roscher. Note to Section LXXXI. English t