Part 6
STRANGER: O Socrates, best of men, you are imposing upon me a very difficult task. We have already digressed further from our original intention than we ought, and you would have us wander still further away. But we must now return to our subject; and hereafter, when there is a leisure hour, we will follow up the other track; at the same time, I wish you to guard against imagining that you ever heard me declare--
YOUNG SOCRATES: What?
STRANGER: That a class and a part are distinct.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What did I hear, then?
STRANGER: That a class is necessarily a part, but there is no similar necessity that a part should be a class; that is the view which I should always wish you to attribute to me, Socrates.
YOUNG SOCRATES: So be it.
STRANGER: There is another thing which I should like to know.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?
STRANGER: The point at which we digressed; for, if I am not mistaken, the exact place was at the question, Where you would divide the management of herds. To this you appeared rather too ready to answer that there were two species of animals; man being one, and all brutes making up the other.
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
STRANGER: I thought that in taking away a part, you imagined that the remainder formed a class, because you were able to call them by the common name of brutes.
YOUNG SOCRATES: That again is true.
STRANGER: Suppose now, O most courageous of dialecticians, that some wise and understanding creature, such as a crane is reputed to be, were, in imitation of you, to make a similar division, and set up cranes against all other animals to their own special glorification, at the same time jumbling together all the others, including man, under the appellation of brutes,--here would be the sort of error which we must try to avoid.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How can we be safe?
STRANGER: If we do not divide the whole class of animals, we shall be less likely to fall into that error.
YOUNG SOCRATES: We had better not take the whole?
STRANGER: Yes, there lay the source of error in our former division.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How?
STRANGER: You remember how that part of the art of knowledge which was concerned with command, had to do with the rearing of living creatures,--I mean, with animals in herds?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
STRANGER: In that case, there was already implied a division of all animals into tame and wild; those whose nature can be tamed are called tame, and those which cannot be tamed are called wild.
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
STRANGER: And the political science of which we are in search, is and ever was concerned with tame animals, and is also confined to gregarious animals.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
STRANGER: But then we ought not to divide, as we did, taking the whole class at once. Neither let us be in too great haste to arrive quickly at the political science; for this mistake has already brought upon us the misfortune of which the proverb speaks.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What misfortune?
STRANGER: The misfortune of too much haste, which is too little speed.
YOUNG SOCRATES: And all the better, Stranger;--we got what we deserved.
STRANGER: Very well: Let us then begin again, and endeavour to divide the collective rearing of animals; for probably the completion of the argument will best show what you are so anxious to know. Tell me, then--
YOUNG SOCRATES: What?
STRANGER: Have you ever heard, as you very likely may--for I do not suppose that you ever actually visited them--of the preserves of fishes in the Nile, and in the ponds of the Great King; or you may have seen similar preserves in wells at home?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, to be sure, I have seen them, and I have often heard the others described.
STRANGER: And you may have heard also, and may have been assured by report, although you have not travelled in those regions, of nurseries of geese and cranes in the plains of Thessaly?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.
STRANGER: I asked you, because here is a new division of the management of herds, into the management of land and of water herds.
YOUNG SOCRATES: There is.
STRANGER: And do you agree that we ought to divide the collective rearing of herds into two corresponding parts, the one the rearing of water, and the other the rearing of land herds?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
STRANGER: There is surely no need to ask which of these two contains the royal art, for it is evident to everybody.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.
STRANGER: Any one can divide the herds which feed on dry land?
YOUNG SOCRATES: How would you divide them?
STRANGER: I should distinguish between those which fly and those which walk.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Most true.
STRANGER: And where shall we look for the political animal? Might not an idiot, so to speak, know that he is a pedestrian?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.
STRANGER: The art of managing the walking animal has to be further divided, just as you might halve an even number.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly.
STRANGER: Let me note that here appear in view two ways to that part or class which the argument aims at reaching,--the one a speedier way, which cuts off a small portion and leaves a large; the other agrees better with the principle which we were laying down, that as far as we can we should divide in the middle; but it is longer. We can take either of them, whichever we please.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Cannot we have both ways?
STRANGER: Together? What a thing to ask! but, if you take them in turn, you clearly may.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Then I should like to have them in turn.
STRANGER: There will be no difficulty, as we are near the end; if we had been at the beginning, or in the middle, I should have demurred to your request; but now, in accordance with your desire, let us begin with the longer way; while we are fresh, we shall get on better. And now attend to the division.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Let me hear.
STRANGER: The tame walking herding animals are distributed by nature into two classes.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Upon what principle?
STRANGER: The one grows horns; and the other is without horns.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly.
STRANGER: Suppose that you divide the science which manages pedestrian animals into two corresponding parts, and define them; for if you try to invent names for them, you will find the intricacy too great.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How must I speak of them, then?
STRANGER: In this way: let the science of managing pedestrian animals be divided into two parts, and one part assigned to the horned herd, and the other to the herd that has no horns.
YOUNG SOCRATES: All that you say has been abundantly proved, and may therefore be assumed.
STRANGER: The king is clearly the shepherd of a polled herd, who have no horns.
YOUNG SOCRATES: That is evident.
STRANGER: Shall we break up this hornless herd into sections, and endeavour to assign to him what is his?
YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.
STRANGER: Shall we distinguish them by their having or not having cloven feet, or by their mixing or not mixing the breed? You know what I mean.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What?
STRANGER: I mean that horses and asses naturally breed from one another.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
STRANGER: But the remainder of the hornless herd of tame animals will not mix the breed.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.
STRANGER: And of which has the Statesman charge,--of the mixed or of the unmixed race?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly of the unmixed.
STRANGER: I suppose that we must divide this again as before.
YOUNG SOCRATES: We must.
STRANGER: Every tame and herding animal has now been split up, with the exception of two species; for I hardly think that dogs should be reckoned among gregarious animals.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not; but how shall we divide the two remaining species?
STRANGER: There is a measure of difference which may be appropriately employed by you and Theaetetus, who are students of geometry.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What is that?
STRANGER: The diameter; and, again, the diameter of a diameter. (Compare Meno.)
YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?
STRANGER: How does man walk, but as a diameter whose power is two feet?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Just so.
STRANGER: And the power of the remaining kind, being the power of twice two feet, may be said to be the diameter of our diameter.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly; and now I think that I pretty nearly understand you.
STRANGER: In these divisions, Socrates, I descry what would make another famous jest.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?
STRANGER: Human beings have come out in the same class with the freest and airiest of creation, and have been running a race with them.
YOUNG SOCRATES: I remark that very singular coincidence.
STRANGER: And would you not expect the slowest to arrive last?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Indeed I should.
STRANGER: And there is a still more ridiculous consequence, that the king is found running about with the herd and in close competition with the bird-catcher, who of all mankind is most of an adept at the airy life. (Plato is here introducing a new subdivision, i.e. that of bipeds into men and birds. Others however refer the passage to the division into quadrupeds and bipeds, making pigs compete with human beings and the pig-driver with the king. According to this explanation we must translate the words above, 'freest and airiest of creation,' 'worthiest and laziest of creation.')
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.
STRANGER: Then here, Socrates, is still clearer evidence of the truth of what was said in the enquiry about the Sophist? (Compare Sophist.)
YOUNG SOCRATES: What?
STRANGER: That the dialectical method is no respecter of persons, and does not set the great above the small, but always arrives in her own way at the truest result.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly.
STRANGER: And now, I will not wait for you to ask, but will of my own accord take you by the shorter road to the definition of a king.
YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.
STRANGER: I say that we should have begun at first by dividing land animals into biped and quadruped; and since the winged herd, and that alone, comes out in the same class with man, we should divide bipeds into those which have feathers and those which have not, and when they have been divided, and the art of the management of mankind is brought to light, the time will have come to produce our Statesman and ruler, and set him like a charioteer in his place, and hand over to him the reins of state, for that too is a vocation which belongs to him.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good; you have paid me the debt,--I mean, that you have completed the argument, and I suppose that you added the digression by way of interest. (Compare Republic.)
STRANGER: Then now, let us go back to the beginning, and join the links, which together make the definition of the name of the Statesman's art.
YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.
STRANGER: The science of pure knowledge had, as we said originally, a part which was the science of rule or command, and from this was derived another part, which was called command-for-self, on the analogy of selling-for-self; an important section of this was the management of living animals, and this again was further limited to the management of them in herds; and again in herds of pedestrian animals. The chief division of the latter was the art of managing pedestrian animals which are without horns; this again has a part which can only be comprehended under one term by joining together three names--shepherding pure-bred animals. The only further subdivision is the art of man-herding,--this has to do with bipeds, and is what we were seeking after, and have now found, being at once the royal and political.
YOUNG SOCRATES: To be sure.
STRANGER: And do you think, Socrates, that we really have done as you say?
YOUNG SOCRATES: What?
STRANGER: Do you think, I mean, that we have really fulfilled our intention?--There has been a sort of discussion, and yet the investigation seems to me not to be perfectly worked out: this is where the enquiry fails.
YOUNG SOCRATES: I do not understand.
STRANGER: I will try to make the thought, which is at this moment present in my mind, clearer to us both.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Let me hear.
STRANGER: There were many arts of shepherding, and one of them was the political, which had the charge of one particular herd?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
STRANGER: And this the argument defined to be the art of rearing, not horses or other brutes, but the art of rearing man collectively?
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
STRANGER: Note, however, a difference which distinguishes the king from all other shepherds.
YOUNG SOCRATES: To what do you refer?
STRANGER: I want to ask, whether any one of the other herdsmen has a rival who professes and claims to share with him in the management of the herd?
YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?
STRANGER: I mean to say that merchants, husbandmen, providers of food, and also training-masters and physicians, will all contend with the herdsmen of humanity, whom we call Statesmen, declaring that they themselves have the care of rearing or managing mankind, and that they rear not only the common herd, but also the rulers themselves.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Are they not right in saying so?
STRANGER: Very likely they may be, and we will consider their claim. But we are certain of this,--that no one will raise a similar claim as against the herdsman, who is allowed on all hands to be the sole and only feeder and physician of his herd; he is also their match-maker and accoucheur; no one else knows that department of science. And he is their merry-maker and musician, as far as their nature is susceptible of such influences, and no one can console and soothe his own herd better than he can, either with the natural tones of his voice or with instruments. And the same may be said of tenders of animals in general.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.
STRANGER: But if this is as you say, can our argument about the king be true and unimpeachable? Were we right in selecting him out of ten thousand other claimants to be the shepherd and rearer of the human flock?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Surely not.
STRANGER: Had we not reason just to now to apprehend, that although we may have described a sort of royal form, we have not as yet accurately worked out the true image of the Statesman? and that we cannot reveal him as he truly is in his own nature, until we have disengaged and separated him from those who hang about him and claim to share in his prerogatives?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.
STRANGER: And that, Socrates, is what we must do, if we do not mean to bring disgrace upon the argument at its close.
YOUNG SOCRATES: We must certainly avoid that.
STRANGER: Then let us make a new beginning, and travel by a different road.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What road?
STRANGER: I think that we may have a little amusement; there is a famous tale, of which a good portion may with advantage be interwoven, and then we may resume our series of divisions, and proceed in the old path until we arrive at the desired summit. Shall we do as I say?
YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.
STRANGER: Listen, then, to a tale which a child would love to hear; and you are not too old for childish amusement.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Let me hear.
STRANGER: There did really happen, and will again happen, like many other events of which ancient tradition has preserved the record, the portent which is traditionally said to have occurred in the quarrel of Atreus and Thyestes. You have heard, no doubt, and remember what they say happened at that time?
YOUNG SOCRATES: I suppose you to mean the token of the birth of the golden lamb.
STRANGER: No, not that; but another part of the story, which tells how the sun and the stars once rose in the west, and set in the east, and that the god reversed their motion, and gave them that which they now have as a testimony to the right of Atreus.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes; there is that legend also.
STRANGER: Again, we have been often told of the reign of Cronos.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, very often.
STRANGER: Did you ever hear that the men of former times were earth-born, and not begotten of one another?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, that is another old tradition.
STRANGER: All these stories, and ten thousand others which are still more wonderful, have a common origin; many of them have been lost in the lapse of ages, or are repeated only in a disconnected form; but the origin of them is what no one has told, and may as well be told now; for the tale is suited to throw light on the nature of the king.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good; and I hope that you will give the whole story, and leave out nothing.
STRANGER: Listen, then. There is a time when God himself guides and helps to roll the world in its course; and there is a time, on the completion of a certain cycle, when he lets go, and the world being a living creature, and having originally received intelligence from its author and creator, turns about and by an inherent necessity revolves in the opposite direction.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Why is that?
STRANGER: Why, because only the most divine things of all remain ever unchanged and the same, and body is not included in this class. Heaven and the universe, as we have termed them, although they have been endowed by the Creator with many glories, partake of a bodily nature, and therefore cannot be entirely free from perturbation. But their motion is, as far as possible, single and in the same place, and of the same kind; and is therefore only subject to a reversal, which is the least alteration possible. For the lord of all moving things is alone able to move of himself; and to think that he moves them at one time in one direction and at another time in another is blasphemy. Hence we must not say that the world is either self-moved always, or all made to go round by God in two opposite courses; or that two Gods, having opposite purposes, make it move round. But as I have already said (and this is the only remaining alternative) the world is guided at one time by an external power which is divine and receives fresh life and immortality from the renewing hand of the Creator, and again, when let go, moves spontaneously, being set free at such a time as to have, during infinite cycles of years, a reverse movement: this is due to its perfect balance, to its vast size, and to the fact that it turns on the smallest pivot.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Your account of the world seems to be very reasonable indeed.
STRANGER: Let us now reflect and try to gather from what has been said the nature of the phenomenon which we affirmed to be the cause of all these wonders. It is this.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What?
STRANGER: The reversal which takes place from time to time of the motion of the universe.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How is that the cause?
STRANGER: Of all changes of the heavenly motions, we may consider this to be the greatest and most complete.
YOUNG SOCRATES: I should imagine so.
STRANGER: And it may be supposed to result in the greatest changes to the human beings who are the inhabitants of the world at the time.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Such changes would naturally occur.
STRANGER: And animals, as we know, survive with difficulty great and serious changes of many different kinds when they come upon them at once.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.
STRANGER: Hence there necessarily occurs a great destruction of them, which extends also to the life of man; few survivors of the race are left, and those who remain become the subjects of several novel and remarkable phenomena, and of one in particular, which takes place at the time when the transition is made to the cycle opposite to that in which we are now living.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?
STRANGER: The life of all animals first came to a standstill, and the mortal nature ceased to be or look older, and was then reversed and grew young and delicate; the white locks of the aged darkened again, and the cheeks the bearded man became smooth, and recovered their former bloom; the bodies of youths in their prime grew softer and smaller, continually by day and night returning and becoming assimilated to the nature of a newly-born child in mind as well as body; in the succeeding stage they wasted away and wholly disappeared. And the bodies of those who died by violence at that time quickly passed through the like changes, and in a few days were no more seen.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Then how, Stranger, were the animals created in those days; and in what way were they begotten of one another?
STRANGER: It is evident, Socrates, that there was no such thing in the then order of nature as the procreation of animals from one another; the earth-born race, of which we hear in story, was the one which existed in those days--they rose again from the ground; and of this tradition, which is now-a-days often unduly discredited, our ancestors, who were nearest in point of time to the end of the last period and came into being at the beginning of this, are to us the heralds. And mark how consistent the sequel of the tale is; after the return of age to youth, follows the return of the dead, who are lying in the earth, to life; simultaneously with the reversal of the world the wheel of their generation has been turned back, and they are put together and rise and live in the opposite order, unless God has carried any of them away to some other lot. According to this tradition they of necessity sprang from the earth and have the name of earth-born, and so the above legend clings to them.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly that is quite consistent with what has preceded; but tell me, was the life which you said existed in the reign of Cronos in that cycle of the world, or in this? For the change in the course of the stars and the sun must have occurred in both.