YOUNG SOCRATES: We’ll remember.
VISITOR: Well then, after this point, let’s admit another one that relates both to the very things we are inquiring into and to the whole business of discussions of this sort.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What’s that?
VISITOR: What if someone put the following question about our pupils sitting together learning their letters. When one of them is asked what letters make up some word or other, are we to say that for him on that [d] occasion the inquiry takes place more for the sake of the single question set before him, or for the sake of his becoming more able to answer all questions relating to letters?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly for the sake of his being able to answer all.
VISITOR: What then about our inquiry now about the statesman? Has it been set before us more for the sake of that very thing, or for the sake of our becoming better dialecticians in relation to all subjects?
YOUNG SOCRATES: That’s clear too—for the sake of our becoming better dialecticians generally.
VISITOR: I certainly don’t suppose that anyone with any sense would want to hunt down the definition of weaving for the sake of weaving itself. But I think the majority of people fail to recognize that for some of the things there are, there are certain perceptible likenesses which are there [e] to be easily understood, and which it is not at all hard to point out when one wants to make an easy demonstration, involving no trouble and without recourse to verbal means, to someone who asks for an account of one of these things. Conversely, for those things that are greatest and most valuable, there is no image at all which has been worked in plain view for the [286] use of mankind, the showing of which will enable the person who wants to satisfy the mind of an inquirer to satisfy it adequately, just by fitting it to one of the senses. That is why one must practice at being able to give and receive an account of each thing; for the things that are without body, which are finest and greatest, are shown clearly only by verbal means and by nothing else, and everything that is now being said is for the sake of these things. But practice in everything is easier in smaller things, rather [b] than in relation to the greater.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very well said.
VISITOR: Well then, let’s remind ourselves of the reasons why we’ve said all this on these subjects.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Why did we say it all?
VISITOR: Not least because of the difficulty we found in accepting the length of our talk about weaving—and about the reversal of the universe, and about the being of the non-being which is the sphere of the sophist; we reflected that it had a rather great length, and in all these cases we rebuked ourselves, out of fear that what we were saying would turn out [c] to be superfluous as well as long. So, the thing for you to say is that the foregoing was for the sake of all those cases, in order that we shan’t suffer any of this sort of misgiving on any future occasion.
YOUNG SOCRATES: I shall do as you say. Tell me what comes next.
VISITOR: Well, I say that you and I must be careful to remember what we have now said, and to distribute censure and praise of both shortness and length, whatever subjects we happen to be talking about on each occasion, by judging lengths not in relation to each other but, in accordance with the part of the art of measurement we previously said we must [d] remember, in relation to what is fitting.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Correct.
VISITOR: Well, that’s right, but we mustn’t refer everything to this. For one thing, we shan’t have any need for a length that fits in relation to pleasure, except perhaps as an incidental consideration. And again, as for what contributes towards the inquiry into the subject set before us, what we have said commits us to making a second and not a first priority of the question how we might find it most easily and quickly, and to give by far the greatest and primary value to the pursuit itself of the ability to divide by classes. In particular, if an account is very long but renders the [e] hearer better at discovering things, our business is to take this one seriously and not feel at all irritated at its length, and similarly if a shorter one, in its turn, has the same effect. Then again, over and above this, if in relation to such discussions someone finds fault with the length of what is said and will not put up with going round in circles, we must not let such a [287] person go just like that48 without a backward glance—with his having made the simple complaint that what has been said has taken a long time. We should think it right that he should also demonstrate, in addition, that if it had been shorter it would make the partners in the discussion better dialecticians and better at discovering how to display in words the things there are. We shall take no notice at all of the other sorts of censure and praise, relating to some other criteria, nor even seem to hear such things at all when they are said. Now enough of these things, if I have your [b] agreement too; let’s go back again to the statesman, and bring the model of weaving, which we talked about before, to bear on it.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Well said—let’s do what you say.
VISITOR: Well then, the king has been separated off from the many sorts of expertise that share his field—or rather from all of them concerned with herds; there remain, we are saying, those sorts of expertise in the city itself that are contributory causes and those that are causes, which we must first divide from each other.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Correct.
VISITOR: So do you recognize that it is difficult to cut them into two? [c] The cause, I think, will become more evident if we proceed.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Well, then that’s what we should do.
VISITOR: Then let’s divide them limb by limb, like a sacrificial animal, since we can’t do it into two. For we must always cut into the nearest number so far as we can.
YOUNG SOCRATES: So how are we to do it in this case?
VISITOR: Just as before: the sorts of expertise that provided tools relating to weaving—all of these, of course, we put down then as contributory causes.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
[d] VISITOR: We must do the same thing now too, but to a still greater degree than we did then. For we must put down as being contributory causes all the sorts of expertise that produce any tool in the city, whether small or large. Without these there would never come to be a city, nor statesmanship, but on the other hand we shan’t, I think, put down any of them as the product of the expertise of the king.
YOUNG SOCRATES: No, we shan’t.
VISITOR: And yet we’re trying to do a difficult thing in separating this class of things from the rest; in fact it is possible for someone to treat anything you like as a tool of something and seem to have said something [e] credible. Nevertheless, among the things people possess in a city, let’s treat the following as being of a different sort.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Different in what way?
VISITOR: Because it does not have the same capacity that tools have. For it is not put together with the purpose of causing the coming into being of something, as a tool is, but for the sake of preserving what craftsmen have produced.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?
VISITOR: That varied class of things which is worked for things liquid and solid, and for things that are prepared on the fire and things that are not—what we refer to with the single name of ‘vessel’: a common class, and one that, I think, simply does not belong at all to the sort of expert [288] knowledge we are looking for.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.
VISITOR: We must then observe a third very extensive class of things that people possess, different from these others, which is found on land and on water, moves about a lot and is fixed, and is accorded high value and none, but has a single name, because it is all for the sake of some supporting or other, always being a seat for something.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?
VISITOR: I suppose we call it by the name of ‘vehicle’; not at all a product of the art of statesmanship, but much more of those of carpentry, pottery, and bronze-working.
YOUNG SOCRATES: I see.
VISITOR: And what
is fourth? Should we say that it is something different [b] from these, something that includes the larger part of the things we mentioned before, all clothing, most armor, and walls, all those encirclements made out of earth, or out of stone, and tens of thousands of other things? Since all of them together are worked for the purpose of defending, it would be most apposite to call the whole class that of ‘defense’, and it would be thought to be a product much more of the expertise of the builder and the weaver, most of it, more correctly than it would be thought to belong to that of the statesman.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Absolutely.
VISITOR: Would we want to put down as a fifth class things to do with [c] decoration, painting, and those representations that are completed by the use of painting, and of music, which have been executed solely to give us pleasures, and which would appropriately be embraced by a single name?
YOUNG SOCRATES: What name?
VISITOR: I think we talk about something we call a ‘plaything’.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course.
VISITOR: Well, this one name will be fittingly given to all of them; for not one of them is for the sake of a serious purpose, but all are done for amusement.
YOUNG SOCRATES: This too I pretty well understand. [d]
VISITOR: And what provides materials for all these things, from which and in which all of the sorts of expertise that have now been mentioned work, a varied class that is itself the offspring of many other sorts of expertise—shall we not put it down as a sixth?
YOUNG SOCRATES: What exactly are you referring to?
VISITOR: Gold and silver, and everything that is mined, and all that the art of tree-felling and any lopping cuts and provides for the art of the carpenter and the basket-weaver—and again the art of stripping off the [e] outer covering of plants, and the one that removes skins from bodies of living things, the art of the skinner; and all the sorts of expertise there are in relation to such things, which by producing cork, and papyrus, and materials for bindings make possible the working up of classes of composite things from classes of things that are not put together. Let us call49 it all one thing, the first-born and incomposite possession of mankind, which is in no way a product of the knowledge of kingship.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Right.
VISITOR: Then again that sort of possession that consists in nutrition, and all those things which when they are blended into the body, their own [289] parts with parts of the body, have a capacity for promoting its care, we must say is a seventh, calling it all together ‘nurture’, unless we have some more attractive term to propose. And if we place it under the arts of the farmer, the hunter, the trainer in the gymnasium, the doctor and the cook, we shall be assigning it more correctly than if we give it to the art of the statesman.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course.
VISITOR: Well then, we have, I think, pretty well dealt, in these seven classes, with all the things that have to do with possessions, with the exception of tame living creatures. Look at our list: it would be most [b] appropriate if we put down the ‘first-born’ class of things at the beginning, and after this ‘tool’, ‘vessel’, ‘vehicle’, ‘defense’, ‘plaything’, ‘nourishment’. If anything of no great importance has escaped us, we leave it to one side,50 because it is capable of fitting into one or other of these, for example the class consisting of currency, seals, and any sort of engraving. For these do not have any great shared class among them, but if some of them are dragged off into decoration, others into tools, it will be forcibly done, but nevertheless they’ll wholly agree to it. As for what relates to possession [c] of tame living creatures, apart from slaves, the art of herd-rearing which we divided into its parts before will clearly be seen to have caught them all.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Absolutely.
VISITOR: Then what remains is the class of slaves and all those people who are subordinate to others, among whom, I strongly suspect, those who dispute with the king about the ‘woven fabric’ itself will come into view, just as in the case of weaving we found those concerned with spinning and carding and all the other things we mentioned disputing with the weavers over their product.51 All the others, who have been described as ‘contributory causes’, have been disposed of along with the products we have just listed, as each was separated off from the practical activity which [d] is the sphere of the art of kingship and statesmanship.
YOUNG SOCRATES: So it seems, at any rate.
VISITOR: Come along, then: let’s get up close to those people that are left and take a look at them, so that we may get a firmer knowledge of them.
YOUNG SOCRATES: That’s what we should do.
VISITOR: Well, those who are subordinate to the greatest degree, looked at from our present perspective, we find possessing a function and condition which are the opposite of what we suspected just now.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Who are they?
VISITOR: Those who are bought, and acquired as possessions by this means; people whom we can indisputably call slaves, and who least pretend [e] to kingly expertise.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite.
VISITOR: What then of all those among free men who voluntarily place themselves in the service of those we have been discussing, conveying their products—the products of farming and the other sorts of expertise—between them, and establishing equality between these products; some in market-places, others moving from one city to another, whether by sea or by land, exchanging currency both for everything else and for itself—people to whom we give the names of ‘money-changers’, ‘merchants’, [290] ‘ship-owners’, and ‘retailers’: surely they won’t lay claim at all to the art of statesmanship?
YOUNG SOCRATES: It may be, perhaps, that they will—to the sort that has to do with commercial matters.
VISITOR: But those we see placing themselves with complete readiness at the service of all, for hire, as day-laborers—these we shall never find pretending to kingly expertise.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite so.
VISITOR: What in that case are we to say about those who perform services of the following sorts for us whenever we need them?
YOUNG SOCRATES: What services do you mean, and who is it you’re talking about?
VISITOR: Among others, the tribe of heralds, and all those who become [b] accomplished at writing by having repeatedly given their services in this respect, and certain others who are very clever at working through many different tasks relating to public offices: what shall we call these?
YOUNG SOCRATES: What you called them just now—subordinates, and not themselves rulers in cities.
VISITOR: But I certainly wasn’t dreaming, I think, when I said that somewhere here there would appear those who particularly lay claim to the art of statesmanship. And yet it would seem very odd indeed to look for them in some portion of the subordinate arts.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, quite. [c]
VISITOR: Then let’s get still closer to those we haven’t yet cross-examined. There are those who have a part of a subordinate sort of expert knowledge in relation to divination; for they are, I believe, considered to be interpreters from gods to men.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
VISITOR: And then too the class of priests, in its turn, has—as custom tells us—expert knowledge about the giving through sacrifices of gifts [d] from us to the gods which are pleasing to them, and about asking from them through prayers for the acquisition of good things for us. I imagine that both of these things are parts of a subordinate art.
YOUNG SOCRATES: It appears so, at any rate.
VISITOR: Well now, it seems to me that at this point we are, as it were, getting close to some sort of trail leading to our destination. For the type of priests and seers is filled full of self-importance and gets a lofty reputation because of the magnitude of what they undertake, so that in Egypt it is [e] not even permitted for a king to hold office without also exercising that of priest. If in fact he happens to have acceded to power at the beginning by force from another class, it is later necessary for him to be initiated
into the class of priests. And again among the Greeks too, in many places, it is to the greatest offices that one would find being assigned the performance of the greatest of the sacrifices in relation to such things. And in fact what I’m saying receives the clearest illustration in your case; for they say that the most solemn and ancestral of the ancient sacrifices are assigned here to the person who becomes king by lot.52
YOUNG SOCRATES: Most certainly.
[291] VISITOR: Well then, we must look both at these king-priests by lot, and their subordinates, and also at a certain other very large crowd of people which has just become visible to us,53 now that the previous ones have been separated off.
YOUNG SOCRATES: But who are the people you mean?
VISITOR: Some very odd people indeed.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How, exactly?
VISITOR: It’s a class mixed out of all sorts, or so it seems to me as I look [b] at it just now. For many of the men resemble lions and centaurs and other such things, and very many resemble satyrs and those animals that are weak but versatile; and they quickly exchange their shapes and capacity for action for each other’s. And yet now, Socrates, I think I have identified the men in question.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Please explain; you seem to have something odd in view.
VISITOR: Yes; it’s a universal experience that not recognizing something makes it odd. And this is exactly what happened to me just now: at the moment when I first saw the chorus of those concerned with the affairs [c] of cities I failed to recognize them.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What chorus?
VISITOR: That of the greatest magician of all the sophists, and the most versed in their expertise. Although removing him from among those who really are in possession of the art of statesmanship and kingship is a very difficult thing to do, remove him we must if we are going to see plainly what we are looking for.
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