about this; and
states, equally?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the same holds of the balance?

ALCIBIADES: True.

SOCRATES: But what is the other agreement of which you speak, and about
what? what art can give that agreement? And does that which gives it to
the state give it also to the individual, so as to make him consistent
with himself and with another?

ALCIBIADES: I should suppose so.

SOCRATES: But what is the nature of the agreement?--answer, and faint
not.

ALCIBIADES: I mean to say that there should be such friendship and
agreement as exists between an affectionate father and mother and their
son, or between brothers, or between husband and wife.

SOCRATES: But can a man, Alcibiades, agree with a woman about the
spinning of wool, which she understands and he does not?

ALCIBIADES: No, truly.

SOCRATES: Nor has he any need, for spinning is a female accomplishment.

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And would a woman agree with a man about the science of arms,
which she has never learned?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: I suppose that the use of arms would be regarded by you as a
male accomplishment?

ALCIBIADES: It would.

SOCRATES: Then, upon your view, women and men have two sorts of
knowledge?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then in their knowledge there is no agreement of women and
men?

ALCIBIADES: There is not.

SOCRATES: Nor can there be friendship, if friendship is agreement?

ALCIBIADES: Plainly not.

SOCRATES: Then women are not loved by men when they do their own work?

ALCIBIADES: I suppose not.

SOCRATES: Nor men by women when they do their own work?

ALCIBIADES: No.

SOCRATES: Nor are states well administered, when individuals do their
own work?

ALCIBIADES: I should rather think, Socrates, that the reverse is the
truth. (Compare Republic.)

SOCRATES: What! do you mean to say that states are well administered
when friendship is absent, the presence of which, as we were saying,
alone secures their good order?

ALCIBIADES: But I should say that there is friendship among them, for
this very reason, that the two parties respectively do their own work.

SOCRATES: That was not what you were saying before; and what do you mean
now by affirming that friendship exists when there is no agreement? How
can there be agreement about matters which the one party knows, and of
which the other is in ignorance?

ALCIBIADES: Impossible.

SOCRATES: And when indivi