Statesman Part 4

STRANGER: And by the help of this distinction we may make, if we please, a subdivision of the section of knowledge which commands.

YOUNG SOCRATES: At what point?

STRANGER: One part may be set over the production of lifeless, the other of living objects; and in this way the whole will be divided.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: That division, then, is complete; and now we may leave one half, and take up the other; which may also be divided into two.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Which of the two halves do you mean?

STRANGER: Of course that which exercises command about animals. For, surely, the royal science is not like that of a master-workman, a science presiding over lifeless objects;--the king has a n.o.bler function, which is the management and control of living beings.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And the breeding and tending of living beings may be observed to be sometimes a tending of the individual; in other cases, a common care of creatures in flocks?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: But the statesman is not a tender of individuals--not like the driver or groom of a single ox or horse; he is rather to be compared with the keeper of a drove of horses or oxen.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, I see, thanks to you.

STRANGER: Shall we call this art of tending many animals together, the art of managing a herd, or the art of collective management?

YOUNG SOCRATES: No matter;--whichever suggests itself to us in the course of conversation.

STRANGER: Very good, Socrates; and, if you continue to be not too particular about names, you will be all the richer in wisdom when you are an old man. And now, as you say, leaving the discussion of the name,--can you see a way in which a person, by showing the art of herding to be of two kinds, may cause that which is now sought amongst twice the number of things, to be then sought amongst half that number?

YOUNG SOCRATES: I will try;--there appears to me to be one management of men and another of beasts.

STRANGER: You have certainly divided them in a most straightforward and manly style; but you have fallen into an error which hereafter I think that we had better avoid.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is the error?

STRANGER: I think that we had better not cut off a single small portion which is not a species, from many larger portions; the part should be a species. To separate off at once the subject of investigation, is a most excellent plan, if only the separation be rightly made; and you were under the impression that you were right, because you saw that you would come to man; and this led you to hasten the steps. But you should not chip off too small a piece, my friend; the safer way is to cut through the middle; which is also the more likely way of finding cla.s.ses.

Attention to this principle makes all the difference in a process of enquiry.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean, Stranger?

STRANGER: I will endeavour to speak more plainly out of love to your good parts, Socrates; and, although I cannot at present entirely explain myself, I will try, as we proceed, to make my meaning a little clearer.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What was the error of which, as you say, we were guilty in our recent division?

STRANGER: The error was just as if some one who wanted to divide the human race, were to divide them after the fashion which prevails in this part of the world; here they cut off the h.e.l.lenes as one species, and all the other species of mankind, which are innumerable, and have no ties or common language, they include under the single name of 'barbarians,' and because they have one name they are supposed to be of one species also. Or suppose that in dividing numbers you were to cut off ten thousand from all the rest, and make of it one species, comprehending the rest under another separate name, you might say that here too was a single cla.s.s, because you had given it a single name.

Whereas you would make a much better and more equal and logical cla.s.sification of numbers, if you divided them into odd and even; or of the human species, if you divided them into male and female; and only separated off Lydians or Phrygians, or any other tribe, and arrayed them against the rest of the world, when you could no longer make a division into parts which were also cla.s.ses.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true; but I wish that this distinction between a part and a cla.s.s could still be made somewhat plainer.

STRANGER: O Socrates, best of men, you are imposing upon me a very difficult task. We have already digressed further from our original intention than we ought, and you would have us wander still further away. But we must now return to our subject; and hereafter, when there is a leisure hour, we will follow up the other track; at the same time, I wish you to guard against imagining that you ever heard me declare--

YOUNG SOCRATES: What?

STRANGER: That a cla.s.s and a part are distinct.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What did I hear, then?

STRANGER: That a cla.s.s is necessarily a part, but there is no similar necessity that a part should be a cla.s.s; that is the view which I should always wish you to attribute to me, Socrates.

YOUNG SOCRATES: So be it.

STRANGER: There is another thing which I should like to know.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?

STRANGER: The point at which we digressed; for, if I am not mistaken, the exact place was at the question, Where you would divide the management of herds. To this you appeared rather too ready to answer that there were two species of animals; man being one, and all brutes making up the other.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: I thought that in taking away a part, you imagined that the remainder formed a cla.s.s, because you were able to call them by the common name of brutes.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That again is true.

STRANGER: Suppose now, O most courageous of dialecticians, that some wise and understanding creature, such as a crane is reputed to be, were, in imitation of you, to make a similar division, and set up cranes against all other animals to their own special glorification, at the same time jumbling together all the others, including man, under the appellation of brutes,--here would be the sort of error which we must try to avoid.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How can we be safe?

STRANGER: If we do not divide the whole cla.s.s of animals, we shall be less likely to fall into that error.

YOUNG SOCRATES: We had better not take the whole?

STRANGER: Yes, there lay the source of error in our former division.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How?

STRANGER: You remember how that part of the art of knowledge which was concerned with command, had to do with the rearing of living creatures,--I mean, with animals in herds?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: In that case, there was already implied a division of all animals into tame and wild; those whose nature can be tamed are called tame, and those which cannot be tamed are called wild.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And the political science of which we are in search, is and ever was concerned with tame animals, and is also confined to gregarious animals.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: But then we ought not to divide, as we did, taking the whole cla.s.s at once. Neither let us be in too great haste to arrive quickly at the political science; for this mistake has already brought upon us the misfortune of which the proverb speaks.