Complete Works (72 page)

V
ISITOR
: Something that is absolutely appropriate for Theaetetus and you to use in your distributions, since it’s geometry the two of you engage in.
²²

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What is it?

V
ISITOR
: The diagonal, one could say, and then again the diagonal of the diagonal.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What do you mean?

V
ISITOR
: The nature which the family or class of us humans possesses [b] surely isn’t endowed for the purpose of going from place to place any differently from the diagonal that has the power of two feet?
²³

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: No.

V
ISITOR
: And what’s more the nature of the remaining class has in its turn the power of the diagonal of our power, if indeed it is endowed with two times two feet.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Of course it is—and I actually almost understand what you want to show.

V
ISITOR
: And there’s more—do we see, Socrates, that there’s something else resulting in our divisions that would itself have done well as a [c] comic turn?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What’s that?

V
ISITOR
: That our human class has shared the field and run together with the noblest and also most easy-going class of existing things?
²⁴

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: I see it turning out very oddly indeed.

V
ISITOR
: Well, isn’t it reasonable to expect the slowest—or sow-est—to come in last?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes, I can agree with that.

V
ISITOR
: And don’t we notice that the king looks even more ridiculous, when he continues to run, along with his herd, and has traversed convergent paths, with the man who for his part is best trained of all for the [d] easy-going life?
²⁵

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Absolutely right.

V
ISITOR
: Yes, Socrates, and what we said before, in our inquiry about the sophist, is now plainer.
²⁶

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What was that?

V
ISITOR
: That such a method of argument as ours is not more concerned with what is more dignified than with what is not, and neither does it at all despise the smaller more than the greater, but always reaches the truest conclusion by itself.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: It seems so.

V
ISITOR
: Well then, after this, so that you don’t get in before me and ask [e] what the shorter way is—the one we spoke of earlier—to the definition of the king, shall I go first and show you the way?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Very much so.

V
ISITOR
: Then I say that in this case one must immediately distribute what goes on foot by opposing the two-footed to the four-footed class, and when one sees the human still sharing the field with the winged alone, one must go on to cut the two-footed herd by means of the non-feathered and the feathered; and when it has been cut, and the expertise of human-herding has then and there been brought into the light, one must lift the expert in statesmanship and kingship like a charioteer into it and instal him there, handing over the reins of the city as belonging to him, and because this expert knowledge is his.

[267]
Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: That’s well done, and you’ve paid me the account I asked for as if it were a debt, adding the digression as a kind of interest, making up the sum.

V
ISITOR
: Come on, then: let’s go back to the beginning and gather together from there to the end our account of the name of the expertise of the statesman.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Absolutely.

V
ISITOR
: Well then: of theoretical knowledge, we had at the beginning [b] a directive part; and of this, the section we wanted was by analogy said to be ‘self-directing’. Then again, rearing of living creatures, not the smallest of the classes of self-directing knowledge, was split off from it; then a herd-rearing form from rearing of living creatures, and from that, in turn, rearing of what goes on foot; and from that, as the relevant part, was cut off the expertise of rearing the hornless sort. Of this in turn the part must be woven together as not less than triple, if one wants to bring it together into a single name, calling it expert knowledge of rearing of non-interbreeding [c] creatures. The segment from this, a part relating to a two-footed flock, concerned with rearing of human beings, still left on its own—this very part is now what we were looking for, the same thing we call both kingly and statesmanlike.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Absolutely.

V
ISITOR
: Is it really the case, Socrates, that we have actually done this, as you have just said?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Done what?

V
ISITOR
: Given a completely adequate response to the matter we raised. Or is our search lacking especially in just this respect, that our account of [d] the matter has been stated in a certain way, but has not been finished off to complete perfection?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: How do you mean?

V
ISITOR
: I shall try now to show, for both of us, still more clearly just what I am thinking of.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Please go ahead.

V
ISITOR
: Well then, of the many sorts of expertise to do with rearing herds that appeared in our view just now, statesmanship was one, and was care of some one sort of herd?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: And our account defined it not as rearing of horses, or of other animals, but as knowledge of the collective rearing of human beings.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Just so.

V
ISITOR
: Then let us look at the difference between all herdsmen, on the [e] one hand, and kings on the other.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What’s that?

V
ISITOR
: Let us see if in the case of any other herdsman anyone who has the title of another expertise claims or pretends to share the rearing of the herd with him.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: How do you mean?

V
ISITOR
: Like this: that merchants, farmers, millers and bakers, all of them, and gymnastic trainers too, and doctors as a class—all of these, as you well know, would loudly contend against the herdsmen concerned
[268]
with things human whom we called statesmen that
they
care for human rearing, not merely for that of human beings in the herd, but for that of the rulers as well.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Well, would they be right?

V
ISITOR
: Perhaps. That we’ll consider, but what we know is that with a cowherd no one will dispute about any of these things, but the herdsman is by himself rearer of the herd, by himself its doctor, by himself its matchmaker, as it were, and sole expert in the midwife’s art when it comes [b] to the births of offspring and confinements. Again, to the extent that the nature of his charges allows them to partake in play and music, no one else is more capable of comforting them and soothing them with his incantations, performing best, as he does, the music that belongs to his flock with instruments or with unaccompanied voice. And it’s the same way with all other herdsmen. True?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Quite right.

V
ISITOR
: So how will our account of the king appear to us right and [c] complete, when we posit him as sole herdsman and rearer of the human herd, singling him out on his own from among tens of thousands of others who dispute the title with him?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: There’s no way in which it can.

V
ISITOR
: Then our fears a little earlier were right, when we suspected that we should prove in fact to be describing some kingly figure, but not yet accurately to have finished the statesman off, until we remove those who crowd round him, pretending to share his herding function with him, and having separated him from them, we reveal him on his own, uncontaminated with anyone else?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes, absolutely right. [d]

V
ISITOR
: Well then, Socrates, this is what we must do, if we are not going to bring disgrace on our argument at its end.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: That is something we must certainly avoid doing at all costs.

V
ISITOR
: Then we must travel some other route, starting from another point.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What route is that?

V
ISITOR
: By mixing in, as one might put it, an element of play: we must bring in a large part of a great story, and as for the rest, we must then—as [e] in what went before—take away part from part in each case and so arrive at the furthest point of the object of our search. So should we do it?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Absolutely.

V
ISITOR
: In that case, pay complete attention to my story, as children do; you certainly haven’t left childish games behind for more than a few years.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Please go ahead.

V
ISITOR
: Then I’ll begin. There have occurred in the past, and will occur in the future, many of the things that have been told through the ages; one is the portent relating to the quarrel between Atreus and Thyestes. I imagine you remember hearing what people say happened then.
²⁷

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: You’re referring, perhaps, to the sign of the golden lamb.

[269]
V
ISITOR
: Not at all; rather to that of the changing of the setting and rising of the sun and the other stars—it’s said that they actually began setting in the region from which they now rise, and rising from the opposite region, and that then after having given witness in favor of Atreus the god changed everything to its present configuration.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes indeed, they do say this as well.

V
ISITOR
: And what’s more, we’ve also heard from many about the kingship exercised by Cronus.
²⁸

[b] Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes, from a great many.

V
ISITOR
: And what of the report that earlier men were born from the earth and were not reproduced from each other?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: This too is one of the things that have been told through the ages.

V
ISITOR
: Well, all these things together are consequences of the same state of affairs, and besides these thousands of others still more astonishing than they; but through the great lapse of time since then some have been obliterated, while others have been reported in a scattered way, each [c] separate from one another. But as for the state of affairs that is responsible for all of these things, no one has related it, and we should relate it now; for once it has been described, it will be a fitting contribution towards our exposition of the king.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: I very much like what you say; go on, and leave nothing out.

V
ISITOR
: Listen then. This universe the god himself sometimes accompanies, guiding it on its way and helping it move in a circle, while at other times he lets it go, when its circuits have completed the measure of the time allotted to it; then it revolves back in the opposite direction, of its own accord, being a living creature and having had intelligence assigned [d] to it by the one who fitted it together in the beginning. This backward movement is inborn in it from necessity, for the following reason.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What reason, exactly?

V
ISITOR
: Remaining permanently in the same state and condition, and being permanently the same, belongs only to the most divine things of all, and by its nature body is not of this order. Now the thing to which we have given the name of ‘heavens’ and ‘cosmos’
²⁹
certainly has a portion of many blessed things from its progenitor, but on the other hand it also has its share of
body
. In consequence it is impossible for it to be altogether [e] exempt from change, although as far as is possible, given its capacities, it moves in the same place, in the same way, with a single motion; and this is why it has reverse rotation as its lot, which is the smallest possible variation of its movement. To turn itself by itself forever is, I dare say, impossible for anything except the one who guides all the things which, unlike him, are in movement; and for him to cause movement now in one way, now in the opposite way is not permitted. From all of these considerations, it follows that one must neither say that the cosmos is always itself responsible for its own turning, nor say at all
³⁰
that it is turned by god in a pair of opposed revolutions, nor again that it is turned by
[270]
some pair of gods whose thoughts are opposed to each other; it is rather what was said just now, which is the sole remaining possibility, that at times it is helped by the guidance of another, divine, cause, acquiring life once more and receiving a restored immortality from its craftsman, while at other times, when it is let go, it goes on its own way under its own power, having been let go at such a time as to travel backwards for many tens of thousands of revolutions because of the very fact that its movement combines the effects of its huge size, perfect balance, and its resting on the smallest of bases.