The Library World Volume 64 Issue 9

“BY WHAT CRITERIA”, a modern Socrates might ask his pupils, “are we to know that a good woman is good ?” And the pupils, after pondering for many months, might reply “We have sought out many good women and they tell us that their measurements are 36‐23‐36; know therefore that any woman who conforms to these measurements is a good woman, but any woman who fails to so conform is not a good woman”. But Socrates would know that a woman might conform to these measurements yet still be ugly in appearance and shrewish by temperament; cold and unloving, while conversely many women could be paragons of womanliness and be nowhere near these measurements.