Complete Works (71 page)

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What do you mean by this, visitor?

V
ISITOR
: I must try to tell you still more clearly, Socrates, out of good will towards your natural endowments. In the present circumstances, I have to say, it is impossible to show what I mean with absolute completeness; but I must bring it just a little further forward for the sake of clarity.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Well then, what sort of thing are you saying we weren’t doing right just now in our divisions?

V
ISITOR
: This sort of thing: it’s as if someone tried to divide the human [d] race into two and made the cut in the way that most people here carve things up, taking the Greek race away as one, separate from all the rest, and to all the other races together, which are unlimited in number, which don’t mix with one another, and don’t share the same language—calling this collection by the single appellation ‘barbarian’. Because of this single appellation, they expect it to be a single family or class too. Another example would be if someone thought that he was dividing number into [e] two real classes by cutting off the number ten-thousand from all the rest, separating it off as a single class, and in positing a single name for all the rest supposed here too that through getting the name this class too came into existence, a second single one apart from the other. But I imagine the division would be done better, more by real classes and more into two, if one cut number by means of even and odd, and the human race in its turn by means of male and female, and only split off Lydians or Phrygians or anyone else and ranged them against all the rest when one was at a
[263]
loss as to how to split in such a way that each of the halves split off was simultaneously a real class and a part.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Quite right; but this very thing—how is one to see it more plainly, that class and part are not the same but different from each other?

V
ISITOR
: An excellent response, Socrates, but what you demand is no light thing. We have already wandered far away from the discussion we proposed, and you are telling us to wander even more. Well, as for now, let’s go back to where we were, which seems the reasonable thing to do; [b] and these other things we’ll pursue like trackers on another occasion, when we have the time. However, there is one thing you must absolutely guard against, and that is ever to suppose that you have heard from me a plain account of the matter.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Which?

V
ISITOR
: That class and part are different from each other.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What should I say I have heard from you?

V
ISITOR
: That whenever there is a class of something, it is necessarily also a part of whatever thing it is called a class of, but it is not at all necessary that a part is a class. You must always assert, Socrates, that this is what I say rather than the other way round.
¹⁴

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: I shall do just that.

V
ISITOR
: Tell me, then, about the next thing. [c]

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What’s that?

V
ISITOR
: The point from which our digression brought us to where we are now. I think it was pretty much the point at which you were asked how to divide herd-rearing, and you said with great keenness that there were two classes of living creatures, one human, and a second single one consisting of all the rest—the animals—together.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: True.

V
ISITOR
: And to me you appeared then to think that in taking away a part you had left behind the rest as in its turn a single class, consisting of all of them, because you had the same name, ‘animals’, to apply to them all. [d]

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: This too was as you say.

V
ISITOR
: And yet, my courageous friend, maybe, if by chance there is some other animal which is rational, as for example the crane seems to be, or some other such creature, and which perhaps distributes names on the same principles as you, it might oppose cranes as one class to all other living creatures and give itself airs, taking all the rest together with human beings and putting them into the same category, which it would call by no other name except—perhaps—‘animals’. So let’s try to be very wary [e] of everything of this sort.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: How?

V
ISITOR
: By not dividing the class of living creatures as a whole, in order to lessen the risk of its happening to us.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes, we must certainly avoid it.

V
ISITOR
: Yes; and we were going wrong in this way just at that point.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: How so?

V
ISITOR
: Of that theoretical knowledge which was directive we had a part, I think, of the class concerned with rearing living creatures, one which was concerned with creatures living in herds. True?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes.

[264]
V
ISITOR
: Well then, living creatures as a whole together had in effect already at that point been divided by the categories of domesticated and wild; for those that have a nature amenable to domestication are called tame, and those who do not
¹⁵
are called wild.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Right.

V
ISITOR
: But the knowledge we are hunting had to be and still is concerned with tame things, and must be looked for with reference to herd animals.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes.

[b] V
ISITOR
: Well then, let’s not divide in the way we did then, looking at everything, or in a hurry, just in order to get quickly to statesmanship. It has already put us in the proverbial situation.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What situation is that?

V
ISITOR
: That by not quietly getting on with dividing properly we have got to our destination more slowly.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes, visitor, and a fine situation it is!

V
ISITOR
: If you say so. In any case, let’s go back and try again from the beginning to divide collective rearing; perhaps, as we go through it in detail, the argument itself will be better able to reveal to you what you are so keen to find. Tell me this.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What?

V
ISITOR
: This—I wonder if perhaps you’ve heard about it from others? [c] You certainly haven’t yourself any direct acquaintance, I know, with the instances of domesticated fish-rearing in the Nile and in the King’s
¹⁶
ponds. In ornamental fountains, at any rate, you may perhaps have seen them.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Absolutely—I’ve both seen these and heard about the others from many people.

V
ISITOR
: And again, examples of goose-rearing and crane-rearing—even if you haven’t travelled over the plains of Thessaly, you’ve certainly heard about these and believe that they exist.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Of course.

[d] V
ISITOR
: Look, it’s for this purpose that I’ve asked you all this: of the rearing of herd animals, some has to do with creatures living in water, some also with creatures that live on dry land.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: It does.

V
ISITOR
: Do you agree, then, that we must split the expert knowledge of collective rearing into two in this way, allocating one of its two parts to each of these, calling one aquatic rearing, the other dry-land rearing?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: I do.

V
ISITOR
: And we certainly shan’t ask, in this case, to which of the two sorts of expertise kingship belongs; it’s quite clear
¹⁷
to anyone. [e]

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Quite.

V
ISITOR
: Everybody would divide the dry-land rearing sort of herd-rearing.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: How?

V
ISITOR
: By separating it by reference to the winged and what goes on foot.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Very true.

V
ISITOR
: Well then—mustn’t we
¹⁸
look for statesmanship in relation to what goes on foot? Or don’t you think that practically even the simplest of minds supposes so?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: I do.

V
ISITOR
: And the expertise to do with the management of creatures that go on foot—we must show it being cut into two, like an even
¹⁹
number.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Clearly.

V
ISITOR
: Now it seems that there are two routes to be seen stretching
[265]
out in the direction of the part towards which our argument has hurried, one of them quicker, dividing a small part off against a large one, while the other more closely observes the principle we were talking about earlier, that one should cut in the middle as much as possible, but is longer. We can go down whichever of the two routes we like.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What if I were to ask if it is impossible to follow both?

V
ISITOR
: An extraordinary suggestion, if you mean both at once; but clearly it is possible to take each in turn.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Then I opt for taking both, in turn. [b]

V
ISITOR
: That’s easy, since the part that remains is short; if we had been at the beginning or in the middle of our journey, the instruction would have been difficult to carry out. As it is, since you think we should take this option, let’s go down the longer route first; while we are fresher we’ll travel it more easily. Observe the division.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Tell me what it is.

V
ISITOR
: Of tame things that live in herds, we find those that go on foot naturally divided into two.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: By what?

V
ISITOR
: By the fact that some of them come into being without horns, some with horns.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Evidently. [c]

V
ISITOR
: Well then, divide the management of creatures that go on foot by assigning it to each of these two parts, using a descriptive phrase for the results of the division. For if you want to give them names, it will be more complicated than necessary.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: How then should it be put?

V
ISITOR
: Like this: by saying that when the knowledge that has to do with the management of creatures that go by foot is divided into two, one part is allocated to the horned part of the herd, the other to the hornless part.

[d] Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Let it be put like that; in any case it’s sufficiently clear.

V
ISITOR
: Now, as for the next step, it’s perfectly obvious to us that the king tends a sort of docked herd—of hornless creatures.
²⁰

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: How couldn’t it be clear?

V
ISITOR
: So by breaking this up let’s try to assign what falls to him.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes, certainly.

V
ISITOR
: Well, do you want to divide it by the split-hooved and the so-called ‘single-hooved’, or by interbreeding and non-interbreeding? I think you grasp the point.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What’s that?

[e] V
ISITOR
: That horses and donkeys are naturally such as to breed from one another.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: Whereas what is still left of the smooth-headed herd of tame creatures is unmixed in breeding, one with another.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Quite.

V
ISITOR
: So: does the statesman, then, seem to take care of an interbreeding or of some non-interbreeding sort?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Clearly, of the non-mixing sort.

V
ISITOR
: This, then, it seems, we must separate into two, as we did in the previous cases.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Indeed we must.

[266]
V
ISITOR
: Now those creatures that are tame and live in herds have pretty well all now been cut into their pieces, except for two classes. For it is not worth our while to count the class of dogs as among creatures living in herds.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: No indeed. But what are we to use to divide
²¹
the two classes?