Statesman

Y. Soc. Well, Stranger, it looks as though our account of the statesman were complete now.

Str. That would be a fine thing for us, Socrates. But not you alone must think so; I must think so, too, in agreement with you. As a matter of fact, however, in my opinion our figure of the king is not yet perfect, but like statue-makers who sometimes in their misapplied enthusiasm make too numerous and too large additions and thus delay the completion of their several works, we too, at this time, wishing to make quick progress, and also to make clear in a grand style the error of our previous course, and, moreover, fancying that the use of great illustrations was proper in the case of a king, have taken up a marvellous mass of myth and have consequently been obliged to use a greater part of it than we should. So we have made our discourse too long and after all have never made an end of the tale, but our talk, just like a picture of a living creature, seems to have a good enough outline, but not yet to have received the clearness that comes from pigments and the blending of colors. And yet it is more fitting to portray any living being by speech and argument than by painting or any handicraft whatsoever to persons who are able to follow argument; but to others it is better to do it by means of works of craftsmanship.

Y. Soc. That is true; but explain wherein you think our exposition is still deficient.

Str. It is difficult, my dear fellow, to set forth any of the greater ideas, except by the use of examples; for it would seem that each of us knows everything that he knows as if in a dream and then again, when he is as it were awake, knows nothing of it all.

Y. Soc. What do you mean by that?

Str. I seem at present in absurd fashion to have touched upon our experience in regard to knowledge.

Y. Soc. In what respect?

Str. Why, my friend, the very example I employ requires another example. [*](i.e. the nature of example is to be explained below by means of an example. The example of the letters of the alphabet is employed also in the Plat. Theaet. 202 ff, but the Stranger cannot properly refer to that, as he was not present at the time. Or is this a dramatic slip on Plato’s part?)

Y. Soc. Indeed? What is it? Don’t hesitate to tell on my account.

Str. I will tell, since you on your part are prepared to listen. We know that children, when they are just getting some knowledge of letters—

Y. Soc. Well?

Str. Recognize the several letters well enough in the short and easy syllables, and can make correct statements about them.

Y. Soc. Yes, of course.

Str. And then again in other syllables they are in doubt about those same letters, and err in opinion and speech about them.

Y. Soc. Yes, certainly.

Str. Would not the easiest and best way to lead them to the letters which they do not yet know be this?

Y. Soc. What?

Str. To lead them first to those cases in which they had correct opinions about these same letters and then to lead them and set them beside the groups which they did not yet recognize and by comparing them to show that their nature is the same in both combinations alike, and to continue until the letters about which their opinions are correct have been shown in juxtaposition with all those of which they are ignorant. Being shown in this way they become examples [*](There is here a play on the words παρα-τιθέμενα δειχθῇ, δειχθέντα δέ, παρα-δείγματα Placed beside, they are shown and being shown, they become paradigms, i.e. objects of comparison, i.e. examples.) and bring it about that every letter is in all syllables always called by the same name, either by differentiation from the other letters, in case it is different, or because it is the same.

Y. Soc. Certainly.

Str. Is this, then, a satisfactory definition, that an example is formed when that which is the same in some second unconnected thing is rightly conceived and compared with the first, so that the two together form one true idea?

Y. Soc. Evidently.

Str. Can we wonder, then, that our soul, whose nature involves it in the same uncertainty about the letters or elements of all things, is sometimes in some cases firmly grounded in the truth about every detail, and again in other cases is all at sea about everything, and somehow or other has correct opinions about some combinations, and then again is ignorant of the same things when they are transferred to the long and difficult syllables of life?

Y. Soc. Surely we need not wonder at that.

Str. No; for could anyone, my friend, who begins with false opinion, ever attain to even a small part of truth and acquire wisdom?

Y. Soc. No; it is hardly possible.

Str. Then if this is the case, would it be a bad thing if you and I first tried to see in another small and partial example the nature of example in general, with the intention of transferring afterwards the same figurative method from lesser things to the most exalted eminence of the king, and trying by means of an example to become acquainted in a scientific way with the management of states, in order that this may be waking knowledge for us, not dream knowledge?

Y. Soc. That is a very good idea.

Str. Then we must take up our former argument again, and since there are countless others who contend that they, rather than the royal class, have the care of states, we must accordingly remove all these and isolate the king; and, as we said, to accomplish this we need an example.

Y. Soc. Certainly.

Str. What example could we apply which is very small, but has the same kind of activity as statesmanship and would enable us satisfactorily to discover that which we seek? What do you say, Socrates, if we have nothing else at hand, to taking at random the art of weaving, and, if you please, not the whole of that? For I fancy the art of weaving wool will be enough; if we choose that part only it will probably furnish us with the illustration we desire.

Y. Soc. Agreed.

Str. Then just as we divided each subject before by cutting off parts from parts, why not now apply the same process to the art of weaving and, by going through all the steps as briefly as we possibly can, arrive quickly at that which serves our present purpose?

Y. Soc. What do you mean?

Str. I will answer you by actually going through the process.

Y. Soc. Excellent

Str. Well, then, all things which we make or acquire are for the sake of doing something or else they are for defence against suffering; and of the defensive class some are spells and antidotes, both divine and human, and some are material defences; and of the material defences some are equipment for war and some are protections; and of protections some are screens and some are defences against heat and cold; and such defences are either shelters or coverings; and coverings are either rugs to spread under us or wrappings to wrap round us; and wrappings are either all of one piece or composed of several pieces; and of the composite garments some are stitched and others put together without stitching; and of the unstitched some are made of the fibres of plants and some are of hair; and of those made with hair some are stuck together with liquids and cement and others are fastened without any such extraneous matter. Now to these protective coverings made of materials fastened without extraneous matter we give the name of clothes; and just as we called the art statecraft which was concerned with the state, so we shall call the art concerned with clothes, from the nature of its activity, clothes-making, shall we not? And may we say further that weaving, in so far as the greatest part of it is, as we saw, concerned with the making of clothes, differs in name only from this art of clothes-making, just as in the other case the royal art differed from statecraft?

Y. Soc. That is perfectly correct.

Str. Let us next reflect that a person might think that this description of the art of weaving was satisfactory, because he cannot understand that it has not yet been distinguished from the closely co-operative arts, though it has been separated from many other kindred arts.

Y. Soc. What kindred arts?

Str. You do not seem to have followed what I have been saying; so I think I had better go back again and begin at the end. For if you understand what I mean by kinship, we distinguished from clothing something akin to it a moment ago when we separated rugs from it by the distinction between spreading under and wrapping round.

Y. Soc. I understand.

Str. And we removed the entire manufacture of cloth made from flax and broom-cords and all that we just now called vegetable fibres; and then, too, we separated off the process of felting and the kind of joining that employs piercing and sewing, most important of which is the shoemaker’s art.

Y. Soc. Yes, to be sure.

Str. And we separated off the art of making coverings of leather in single pieces and all the arts of making shelters, which we find in house-building and carpentering in general and in other methods of protection against water, and all the arts which furnish protection against theft and acts of violence, the arts, that is to say, of making lids and constructing doors, which are regarded as parts of the joiner’s art; and we cut off the armorer’s art, which is a section of the great and various function of making defences; and at the very beginning we cut off the whole art of magic which is concerned with antidotes and spells, and we have left, as it would seem, just the art we were seeking, which furnishes protection from the weather, manufactures a defence of wool, and is called the art of weaving.

Y. Soc. That seems to be the case.

Str. But, my boy, this is not yet completely stated; for the man who is engaged in the first part of the making of clothes appears to do something the opposite of weaving.

Y. Soc. How so?

Str. The process of weaving is, I take it, a kind of joining together.

Y. Soc. Yes.

Str. But the first part I refer to is a separation of what is combined and matted together.

Y. Soc. What do you mean?

Str. The work of the carder’s art. Or shall we have the face to say that carding is weaving and the carder is a weaver?

Y. Soc. No, certainly not.

Str. And surely if we say the art of making the warp or the woof is the art of weaving, we are employing an irrational and false designation.

Y. Soc. Of course.

Str. Well then, shall we say that the whole arts of fulling and mending are no part of the care and treatment of clothes, or shall we declare that these also are entirely included in the art of weaving?

Y. Soc. By no means.

Str. But surely all these will contest the claim of the art of weaving in the matter of the treatment and the production of clothes; they will grant that the part of weaving is the most important, but will claim that their own parts are of some importance, too.

Y. Soc. Yes, certainly.

Str. Then we must believe that besides these the arts which produce the tools by means of which the works of weaving are accomplished will claim to be collaborators in every work of weaving.

Y. Soc. Quite right.

Str. Will our definition of the art of weaving (I mean the part of it we selected) be satisfactory if we say that of all the activities connected with woollen clothing it is the noblest and the greatest? Or would that, although it contains some truth, yet lack clearness and completeness until we separate from weaving all these other arts?

Y. Soc. You are right.

Str. Then shall our next move be to do this, that our discussion may proceed in due order?

Y. Soc. Certainly.

Str. First, then, let us observe that there are two arts involved in all production.

Y. Soc. What are they?

Str. The one is a contingent cause, the other is the actual cause.

Y. Soc. What do you mean?

Str. Those arts which do not produce the actual thing in question, but which supply to the arts which do produce it the tools without which no art could ever perform its prescribed work, may be called contingent causes, and those which produce the actual thing are causes.

Y. Soc. At any rate, that is reasonable.

Str. Next, then, shall we designate all the arts which produce spindles, shuttles, and the various other tools that partake in the production of clothing as contingent causes, and those which treat and manufacture the clothing itself as causes?

Y. Soc. Quite right.

Str. And among the causal arts we may properly include washing and mending and all the care of clothing in such ways; and, since the art of adornment is a wide one, we may classify them as a part of it under the name of fulling.

Y. Soc. Good.

Str. And, again, carding and spinning and all the processes concerned with the actual fabrication of the clothing under consideration, form collectively one art familiar to every one—the art of wool-working.

Y. Soc. Of course.

Str. And wool-working comprises two divisions, and each of these is a part of two arts at once.

Y. Soc. How is that?

Str. Carding, and one half of the use of the weaver’s rod, [*](The weaver’s rod (for the Greeks appear to have used a rod, not a comb) was used to drive the threads of the woof close together, and also to keep the threads of the warp and woof distinct (cf. Plat. Crat. 388a). All the processes here described, familiar as they were to the ancients, have been done away with, or, at least, greatly modified, in Europe and America by the modern methods of industry.) and the other crafts which separate things that are joined—all this collectively is a part of the art of wool-working; and in all things we found two great arts, that of composition and that of division.

Y. Soc. Yes.

Str. Now carding and all the other processes just mentioned are parts of the art of division; for the art of division in wool and threads, exercised in one way with the rod and in another with the hands, has all the names just mentioned.

Y. Soc. Yes, certainly.

Str. Then let us again take up something which is at once a part of the arts of composition and of wool-working. Let us put aside all that belongs to division, making two parts of wool-working, by applying the principles of division and of composition.

Y. Soc. Let us make that distinction.

Str. The part which belongs at once to composition and to wool-working, Socrates, you must allow us to divide again, if we are to get a satisfactory concept of the aforesaid art of weaving.

Y. Soc. Then we must divide it.

Str. Yes, we must; and let us call one part of it the art of twisting threads, and the other the art of intertwining them.

Y. Soc. I am not sure I understand. By the art of twisting I think you mean the making of the warp.

Str. Not that only, but also the making of the woof. We shall not find that the woof is made without twisting, shall we?

Y. Soc. No, of course not.

Str. Well, just define warp and woof; perhaps the definition would serve you well at this junction.

Y. Soc. How shall I do it?

Str. In this way: A piece of carded wool, which is lengthened out and is wide, is said to be a lap of wool, is it not?

Y. Soc. Yes.

Str. And if any such lap of wool is twisted with a spindle and made into a hard thread, we call the thread warp, and the art which governs this process is the art of spinning the warp.

Y. Soc. Right.

Str. And the threads, in turn, which are more loosely twisted and have in respect to the force used in the carding a softness adapted to the interweaving with the warp we will call the woof, and the art devoted to these we will call the art of preparing the woof. [*](i.e. the pull (ὁλκή)of the carder’s comb was less strong in the preparation of the threads of the woof than in that of the threads of the warp.)

Y. Soc. Quite right.

Str. So now the part of the art of weaving which we chose for our discussion is clear to pretty much every understanding; for when that part of the art of composition which is included in the art of weaving forms a web by the right intertwining of woof and warp, we call the entire web a woollen garment, and the art which directs this process we call weaving.

Y. Soc. Quite right.

Str. Very good. Then why in the world did we not say at once that weaving is the intertwining of woof and warp? Why did we beat about the bush and make a host of futile distinctions?

Y. Soc. For my part, I thought nothing that was said was futile, Stranger.

Str. And no wonder; but perhaps you might change your mind. Now to avoid any such malady, in case it should, as is not unlikely, attack you frequently hereafter, I will propose a principle of procedure which is applicable to all cases of this sort.

Y. Soc. Do so.

Str. First, then, let us scrutinize the general nature of excess and deficiency, for the sake of obtaining a rational basis for any praise or blame we may bestow upon excessive length or brevity in discussions of this kind.

Y. Soc. Yes, that is a good thing to do.

Str. Then the proper subjects for our consideration would, I fancy, be these.

Y. Soc. What?

Str. Length and shortness and excess and deficiency in general; for all of them may be regarded as the subjects of the art of measurement.

Y. Soc. Yes.

Str. Let us, then, divide that art into two parts; that is essential for our present purpose.

Y. Soc. Please tell how to make the division.

Str. In this way: one part is concerned with relative greatness or smallness, the other with the something without which production would not be possible.

Y. Soc. What do you mean?

Str. Do you not think that, by the nature of the case, we must say that the greater is greater than the less and than nothing else, and that the less is less than the greater and than nothing else?

Y. Soc. Yes.

Str. But must we not also assert the real existence of excess beyond the standard of the mean, and of inferiority to the mean, whether in words or deeds, and is not the chief difference between good men and bad found in such excess or deficiency?

Y. Soc. That is clear.

Str. Then we must assume that there are these two kinds of great and small, and these two ways of distinguishing between them; we must not, as we did a little while ago, say that they are relative to one another only, but rather, as we have just said, that one kind is relative in that way, and the other is relative to the standard of the mean. Should we care to learn the reason for this?

Y. Soc. Of course.

Str. If we assert that the greater has no relation to anything except the less, it will never have any relation to the standard of the mean, will it?

Y. Soc. No.

Str. Will not this doctrine destroy the arts and their works one and all, and do away also with statesmanship, which we are now trying to define, and with weaving, which we did define? For all these are doubtless careful about excess and deficiency in relation to the standard of the mean; they regard them not as non-existent, but as real difficulties in actual practice, and it is in this way, when they preserve the standard of the mean, that all their works are good and beautiful.

Y. Soc. Certainly.

Str. And if we do away with the art of statesmanship, our subsequent search for the kingly art will be hopeless, will it not?

Y. Soc. Certainly.

Str. Then just as in the case of the sophist [*](Plat. Soph. 235) we forced the conclusion that not-being exists, since that was the point at which we had lost our hold of the argument, so now we must force this second conclusion, that the greater and the less are to be measured in relation, not only to one another, but also to the establishment of the standard of the mean, must we not? For if this is not admitted, neither the statesman nor any other man who has knowledge of practical affairs can be said without any doubt to exist.

Y. Soc. Then we must by all means do now the same that we did then.

Str. This, Socrates, is a still greater task than that was; and yet we remember how long that took us; but it is perfectly fair to make about them some such assumption as this.

Y. Soc. As what?

Str. That sometime we shall need this principle of the mean for the demonstration of absolute precise truth. But our belief that the demonstration is for our present purpose good and sufficient is, in my opinion, magnificently supported by this argument—that we must believe that all the arts alike exist and that the greater and the less are measured in relation not only to one another but also to the establishment of the standard of the mean. For if this exists, they exist also, and if they exist, it exists also, but neither can ever exist if the other does not.

Y. Soc. That is quite right. But what comes next?

Str. We should evidently divide the science of measurement into two parts in accordance with what has been said. One part comprises all the arts which measure number, length, depth, breadth, and thickness in relation to their opposites; the other comprises those which measure them in relation to the moderate, the fitting, the opportune, the needful, and all the other standards that are situated in the mean between the extremes.

Y. Soc. Both of your divisions are extensive, and there is a great difference between them.

Str. Yes, for what many clever persons occasionally say, Socrates, fancying that it is a wise remark, namely, that the science of measurement has to do with everything, is precisely the same as what we have just said. For in a certain way all things which are in the province of art do partake of measurement; but because people are not in the habit of considering things by dividing them into classes, they hastily put these widely different relations [*](i.e. relations to each other and relations to the standard of the mean.) into the same category, thinking they are alike; and again they do the opposite of this when they fail to divide other things into parts. What they ought to do is this: when a person at first sees only the unity or common quality of many things, he must not give up until he sees all the differences in them, so far as they exist in classes; and conversely, when all sorts of dissimilarities are seen in a large number of objects he must find it impossible to be discouraged or to stop until has gathered into one circle of similarity all the things which are related to each other and has included them in some sort of class on the basis of their essential nature. No more need be said, then, about this or about deficiency and excess; let us only bear carefully in mind that two kinds of measurement which apply to them have been found, and let us remember what those kinds are.

Y. Soc. We will remember.

Str. Now that we have finished this discussion, let us take up another which concerns the actual objects of our inquiry and the conduct of such discussions in general.

Y. Soc. What is it?

Str. Suppose we were asked the following question about a group of pupils learning their letters: When a pupil is asked of what letters some word or other composed, is the question asked for the sake of the one particular word before him or rather to make him more learned about all words in the lesson?

Y. Soc. Clearly to make him more learned about them all.

Str. And how about our own investigation of the statesman? Has it been undertaken for the sake of his particular subject or rather to make us better thinkers about all subjects?

Y. Soc. Clearly this also is done with a view to them all.

Str. Of course no man of sense would wish to pursue the discussion of weaving for its own sake; but most people, it seems to me, fail to notice that some things have sensible resemblances which are easily perceived; and it is not at all difficult to show them when anyone wishes, in response to a request for an explanation of some one of them, to exhibit them easily without trouble and really without explanation. But, on the other hand, the greatest and noblest conceptions have no image wrought plainly for human vision, which he who wishes to satisfy the mind of the inquirer can apply to some one of his senses and by mere exhibition satisfy the mind.

Str. We must therefore endeavor by practice to acquire the power of giving and understanding a rational definition of each one of them; for immaterial things, which are the noblest and greatest, can be exhibited by reason only, and it is for their sake that all we are saying is said. But it is always easier to practise in small matters than in greater ones.

Y. Soc. Excellent.

Str. Let us, then, remember the reason for all that we have said about these matters.

Y. Soc. What is the reason?

Str. The reason is chiefly just that irritating impatience which we exhibited in relation to the long talk about weaving and the revolution of the universe and the sophist’s long talk about the existence of not-being. [*](See Plat. theaet. 283, Plat. Theaet. 277, Plat. Soph. 261) We felt that they were too long, and we reproached ourselves for all of them, fearing that our talk was not only long, but irrelevant. Consider, therefore, that the reason for what has just been said is my wish to avoid any such impatience in the future.

Y. Soc. Very well. Please go on with what you have to say.

Str. What I have to say, then, is that you and I, remembering what has just been said, must praise or blame the brevity or length of our several discussions, not by comparing their various lengths with one another, but with reference to that part of the science of measurement which we said before must be borne in mind; I mean the standard of fitness.

Y. Soc. Quite right.