These are some of the deficiencies in women: we have to go to the _Rhetoric_ to get Aristotle’s idea of their merits. The passage is significant:
θηλειῶν δὲ ἀρετή σώματος μὲν κάλλος καὶ μέγεθος, ψύχης δὲ σωφροσύνη καὶ φιλεργία ἄνευ ἀνελευθερίας.[5]
The excellence of females is (_a_) physical, a large and beautiful body; (_b_) mental, virtuous moderation and a love—but not a sordid love—of work.
First, it will be seen, comes physical attractiveness. The excellent woman must be good-looking, and by ‘good-looking’ we mean tall and stout, for ethereal grace does not suit the harem-master’s taste. Secondly, she will be temperate in her desires: the word ‘Sophrosyne,’ ‘virtuous moderation,’ is the chief virtue in a woman: it is the faculty of ‘doing without’—love, food, pleasure, consideration, etc.—and the Greeks, unlike the Romans, really did admire this passive merit even in men. Thirdly comes industry, with the restriction that a woman must not be a slave to work: she has other even more important duties—her master’s pleasure, for example—and work must not be allowed to interfere unduly. In his conception of female virtue Aristotle has advanced somewhat from Pericles’ negative ideal, but he has not got very far.
The most instructive passages, however, in the _Ethics_ are in the Eighth Book, where friendship is considered.
There is another kind of friendship or love depending upon superiority, the friendship or love of a father for a son, of a husband for a wife, of a ruler for a subject. These friendships are of different sorts: the love of a husband for a wife is not the same as that of wife for a husband. There is a different virtue in each, a different function, and different motives. It follows that the services rendered by each party to the other are not the same, nor is it right to expect they should be. In all such friendships as depend upon the principle of superiority, the affection should be proportionate to the superiority; _i.e._, the better or the more useful party, or whoever may be the superior, should receive more affection than he gives.
This may sound to us humorous, but Aristotle is quite serious: it is part of his great doctrine of ‘proportional equality’; and his only doubt is as to which adjective is most appropriate to man, ‘better,’ or ‘more useful,’ or simply ‘superior.’[6] Friendship leads to a discussion of domestic associations, and while the _rule_ of a slave-master seems a _right_ form of despotism, the association of husband and wife is judged to be ‘aristocratical,’ for the husband’s rule depends upon merit and is confined to its proper sphere. He assigns to the wife all that suitably belongs to her. If the husband is lord of _everything_, he changes the association to an ‘oligarchy’; for then he acts unfairly and not in virtue of his superior merit. ‘Sometimes the wife rules as being an heiress, but such rule is not based upon merit.’[7]