Complete Works (75 page)

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Absolutely right.

V
ISITOR
: Then we must take up once again what we were saying before,
⁴⁰
[279]
to the effect that since tens of thousands of people dispute the role of caring for cities with the kingly class, what we have to do is to separate all these off and leave the king on his own; and it was just for this purpose that we said we needed a model.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Very much so.

V
ISITOR
: So what model, involving the same activities as statesmanship, on a very small scale, could one compare with it, and so discover in a satisfactory way what we are looking for? By Zeus, Socrates, what do you [b] think? If there isn’t anything else to hand, well, what about weaving? Do you want us to choose that? Not all of it, if you agree, since perhaps the weaving of cloth from wool will suffice; maybe it is this part of it, if we choose it, which would provide the testimony we want.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: I’ve certainly no objection.

V
ISITOR
: Why then don’t we now do the very same thing with weaving that we did in what preceded, dividing each thing by cutting it into parts, [c] and then cutting them? We’ll get back to what is useful in the present context after covering everything as briefly and quickly as we can.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What do you mean?

V
ISITOR
: I shall make my answer to you by just going through it.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: An excellent suggestion.

V
ISITOR
: Well then: all the things we make and acquire are either for the sake of our doing something, or they prevent something’s happening to us. Of preventives, some are charms, whether divine or human, warding [d] things off, others forms of defense. Of forms of defense some are ways of arming for war, others forms of protection. Of forms of protection some are screens, others means of warding off cold and hot weather. Of the latter type of protectives some are shelters, others coverings; of coverings one sort consists of things spread under, a different sort of things put round. Of things put round, some are cut out in one piece, while a different sort are compound; of the compound some are perforated, others bound [e] together without perforation; of the unperforated some are made of the ‘sinews’ of things growing from the earth, others of hair. Of those made of hair, some are stuck together by means of water and earth, others are bound together with themselves. It is to these preventives and coverings manufactured from materials that are being bound together with themselves that we give the name ‘clothes’; as for the expertise that especially
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has charge of clothes—just as before we gave the name of ‘statesmanship’ to the sort of expertise that especially had charge of the state, so too now shall we call this sort ‘the art of clothes-making’, from the thing itself? And shall we say that weaving too, in so far as it represented the largest part of the manufacture of clothes, does not differ at all, except in name, from this art of clothes-making, just as in that other case we said that the art of kingship did not differ from that of statesmanship?
⁴¹

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes; absolutely correct.

V
ISITOR
: As for what comes next, let’s reflect that someone might perhaps [b] suppose that weaving had been adequately described when put like this, being unable to grasp that it had not yet been divided off from those cooperative arts that border on it, while it had been parcelled off from many other related ones.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Tell me—which related ones?

V
ISITOR
: You didn’t follow what’s been said, it seems; so it looks as if we must go back again, starting from the end. If you grasp the kinship in this case, we cut off one ‘related’ expertise from weaving just now, separating off the putting together of blankets by means of the distinction between putting round and putting under.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: I understand.

[c] V
ISITOR
: What’s more, we took away all craftwork out of flax, esparto, and what we just now by analogy called ‘sinews’ of plants; again we divided off both the art of felting and the sort of putting together that uses perforation and sewing, of which the largest is the art of cobbling.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Absolutely.

V
ISITOR
: Still further, working with skins, which looks after coverings cut in a single piece, and those sorts of activities that look after shelters, all those involved in building and carpentry in general and, in other sorts [d] of expertise, contriving shelter from inflowing water—all of these we took away. Also, all those sorts of expertise in forms of protection that offer preventive products in relation to thefts and violent acts, and those that have to do with carrying out the work of lid-making, and fixings to doorways, which are assigned as parts of the art of joinery. And we cut away the art of arms-manufacture, a segment of that great and varied capacity which is defense-production. Then again our first and immediate move [e] was to divide off the whole of the art of magic which is concerned with protective charms, and we have left behind—as we might suppose—the very expertise we looked for, which protects us against cold weather, productive of a woollen defense, and called by the name of weaving.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes, that seems to be so.

V
ISITOR
: But put like this, my boy, it is not yet complete. The person who puts his hand first to the production of clothes seems to do the
[281]
opposite of weaving.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: How so?

V
ISITOR
: The business of weaving, I suppose, is a sort of intertwining.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: But in fact what I’m talking about is a matter of breaking apart things that are combined or matted together.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What is it you’re referring to?

V
ISITOR
: The function of the art of the carder. Or shall we dare to call the art of carding the art of weaving, and treat the carder as if he were a weaver?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Certainly not.

V
ISITOR
: And then too if someone calls the art of manufacturing warp and woof ‘weaving’, he is using a name that is not only odd but false. [b]

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Quite.

V
ISITOR
: And what about these cases? Are we to put down the whole of the art of fulling, and clothes-mending, as being no sort of care for clothes, nor as any sort of looking after them, or shall we refer to all of these too as arts of weaving?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Certainly not.

V
ISITOR
: Yet all of these will dispute the role of looking after and producing clothes with the capacity which is the art of weaving, conceding a very large part to it, but assigning large shares to themselves too.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Certainly. [c]

V
ISITOR
: Then again, in addition to these, we must suppose that the sorts of expertise responsible for making the tools through which the products of weaving are completed will also lay claim to being at least a contributory cause of every woven article.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Quite correct.

V
ISITOR
: So will our account of that part of the art of weaving that we selected be sufficiently definite, if we proceed to set it down as finest and greatest of all those sorts of care that exist in relation to woollen clothing? [d] Or would we be saying something true, but not clear or complete, until such time as we remove all of these too from around it?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Correct.

V
ISITOR
: Then after this we must do what we’re saying we should do, in order that our account may proceed in due order.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Quite.

V
ISITOR
: Well then, let’s look at two sorts of expertise that there are in relation to all the things that people do.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Which are they?

V
ISITOR
: One which is a contributory cause of production, one which is itself a cause.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: How so?

[e] V
ISITOR
: Those which do not make the thing itself, but which provide tools for those that do—tools which, if they were not present, what has been assigned to each expertise would never be accomplished: these are what I mean by contributory causes, while those that bring the thing itself to completion are causes.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: That seems to make sense.

V
ISITOR
: Then as a next step shall we call contributory causes all those that are concerned with spindles and shuttles and whatever other tools share in the process of production in relation to garments, calling those that look after and make garments themselves causes?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Quite correct.

[282]
V
ISITOR
: Then among the causes, washing and mending and the whole business of looking after clothes in these sorts of ways—it’s perfectly reasonable to encompass this part of the extensive field covered by the art of preparation by calling it all ‘the art of the fuller’.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Right.

V
ISITOR
: Again, carding and spinning and everything relating to the making of clothes itself—which is the thing whose parts we’re talking about—all constitute a single expertise among those everybody recognizes, namely wool-working.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Of course.

[b] V
ISITOR
: Next, there are two segments of wool-working, and each of these is a part of two sorts of expertise at once.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: How so?

V
ISITOR
: What has to do with carding, and half of the art of the shuttle, and all those activities that set apart from each other things that are together—all of this we can, I suppose, declare as one and as belonging to wool-working itself? And there were, we agreed, two great sorts of expertise in every sphere, that of combination and that of separation.
⁴²

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: Well then, it’s to the art of separation that belong that of carding [c] and all the things just mentioned; for separation in the case of wool and the warp, which happens in different ways, in the first case through the shuttle, in the second through use of the hands, has acquired as many names as we referred to a moment ago.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Absolutely.

V
ISITOR
: Then again, by contrast, let’s take a part that is simultaneously a part of combination and of wool-working and takes place in the latter; and whatever parts of separation there were here, let’s let all of them go, cutting wool-working into two by means of the cut between separation and combination.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Count it as divided.

V
ISITOR
: Then in its turn, Socrates, you should divide the part that is [d] simultaneously combination and wool-working, if indeed we are going to capture the aforesaid art of weaving.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Then I must.

V
ISITOR
: Indeed you must: and let’s say that part of it is twisting, part intertwining.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Do I understand correctly? By twisting, you seem to me to be talking about what relates to the manufacture of the warp.

V
ISITOR
: Not only of the warp, but of the woof too; or are we going to find some origin for the woof which doesn’t involve twisting?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Certainly not.

V
ISITOR
: Well, define each of these two things too; perhaps you might [e] find defining them timely.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Define them how?

V
ISITOR
: Like this: among the products of carding, when its material is drawn out to a certain length and has acquired breadth, do we say that there’s a ‘flock’ of wool?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: Of this, then, the yarn that has been twisted by the spindle and been made firm you’ll call the warp, and the expertise that guides its production ‘warp-spinning’.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Correct.

V
ISITOR
: But those threads that in their turn get a loose twisting, and have a softness appropriate to the twining in of the warp, but also to what is needed for drawing out in the dressing process, you’ll call these—the products of the spinning—the woof, and the expertise that is set over their production—let’s call it ‘woof-spinning’.
⁴³
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