Statesman

Plato · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

SOCRATES: I owe you a great debt, Theodorus, for introducing me to Theaetetus — and to our visitor as well. THEODORUS: Yet soon, Socrates, you'll owe three times that debt, once they've finished working out the statesman and the philosopher for you. SOCRATES: Well now — is that really how we ought to report what we've heard from the master of calculation and geometry, my dear Theodorus? THEODORUS: What do you mean, Socrates? SOCRATES: I mean that you've set an equal value on each of these men, when in fact they're farther apart in worth than your own art's proportions would allow. THEODORUS: Well said, by our god Ammon, Socrates, and justly too — you've called out my arithmetical blunder with quite a memory for it. I'll settle accounts with you another time. But you, stranger, don't tire of your kindness to us — go on and give us, in whichever order you prefer, the statesman first or the philosopher first, just choose one and take us through it. VISITOR: That's what we must do, Theodorus, since we've once put our hand to it there's no backing out before we've brought the business to its end. But what am I to do about our young friend Theaetetus here? THEODORUS: What about him? VISITOR: Should we let him rest and take on his fellow-athlete here, Socrates, instead? What do you advise? THEODORUS: Yes, take him on as you say — they're both young, and resting will make it easier for them to bear the whole exertion. SOCRATES: And indeed, stranger, the two of them seem to share some kinship with me, from somewhere or other.

SOCRATES: The one of them, you all say, resembles me in the look of his face; the other shares my name and my title, which gives us a kind of kinship too. We ought always to be eager to get to know our kin through conversation. Now with Theaetetus I myself talked yesterday, and I've just heard him answering questions, but I've done neither with Socrates here — we need to look into him too. Let him answer you now, and me another time. VISITOR: So it shall be. Socrates, are you listening to Socrates? YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. VISITOR: Do you agree with what he says? YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. VISITOR: Nothing on your side seems to stand in the way, and I daresay I should get in my own way even less. But after the sophist, it seems to me, we two must now hunt down the statesman. Tell me — should we count him too as one of those who possess knowledge, or how? YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, that way. VISITOR: Then we must divide up the branches of knowledge, just as we did when we were examining the sophist earlier? YOUNG SOCRATES: Perhaps. VISITOR: Yet the cut doesn't seem to me to fall in the same place, Socrates. YOUNG SOCRATES: Why not? VISITOR: It falls somewhere else. YOUNG SOCRATES: It does seem so. VISITOR: Then by what path will we track down statesmanship? For we must find it, and set it apart from the rest, stamping it with one single form of its own, while marking all the other branch-paths with one other form, so that our mind comes to think of the whole of knowledge as two kinds. YOUNG SOCRATES: That job is yours now, stranger, I think, not mine. VISITOR: All the same, Socrates, it must become yours too, once it's plain to us both. YOUNG SOCRATES: Well said. VISITOR: Now then — isn't arithmetic, and certain other arts akin to it, bare of action, offering only knowledge? YOUNG SOCRATES: That's so. VISITOR: Whereas the arts of carpentry and manual craft generally possess a knowledge bound up organically with action, and together with that action they complete bodies that didn't exist before? YOUNG SOCRATES: Just so. VISITOR: On this basis, then, divide all the branches of knowledge, calling one the practical, the other purely cognitive. YOUNG SOCRATES: Take it, then, that the whole single body of knowledge has these two kinds. VISITOR: Now should we set down the statesman, king, master, and household manager as all one and the same, calling them by a single name, or should we say there are as many distinct arts as names we've listed? Better — follow me this way. YOUNG SOCRATES: Which way?

VISITOR: Like this. If a private citizen is capable of advising one of the public physicians, isn't it necessary that he be called by the same name as the art he's advising in? YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. VISITOR: And what of this — if a private man is skilled at giving advice to a ruling king, shall we not say he possesses the very knowledge the ruler himself ought to have? YOUNG SOCRATES: We shall say so. VISITOR: But surely that is the knowledge belonging to a true king — kingly knowledge? YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. VISITOR: And whoever possesses this, whether he happens to be a ruler or a private citizen, will rightly be called kingly, purely in virtue of the art itself? YOUNG SOCRATES: That's only fair. VISITOR: And household manager and master of a house are the same thing. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. VISITOR: And further — will the scale of a great household or the bulk of a small city make any difference at all in respect of rule? YOUNG SOCRATES: None. VISITOR: So then, as we've just been examining, it's clear that there is one single knowledge concerned with all these things — and whether one calls it kingly, statesmanly, or the art of household management, let's not quarrel with him over it. YOUNG SOCRATES: Why should we? VISITOR: But this much is plain, that any king can do very little with his hands and his body as a whole toward holding onto his rule, compared to what his mind's understanding and strength can do. YOUNG SOCRATES: Plain enough. VISITOR: So would you have us say the king is more akin to the cognitive kind of knowledge than to the manual and generally practical kind? YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. VISITOR: Then shall we put statesmanship and the statesman, kingship and the king, together as one and the same? YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly. VISITOR: So we'd be moving forward in due order if we next divided up cognitive knowledge? YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. VISITOR: Pay attention, then, in case we notice some natural split within it. YOUNG SOCRATES: Tell me what kind you mean. VISITOR: This kind. We had, I think, an art called calculation. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. VISITOR: Wholly among the cognitive arts, I'd say. YOUNG SOCRATES: How could it not be? VISITOR: Once calculation has grasped the differences among numbers, do we assign it any further task beyond judging what has been grasped? YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course not. VISITOR: And likewise every master-builder is not himself a laborer but a ruler of laborers. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. VISITOR: Supplying knowledge, that is, not manual work. YOUNG SOCRATES: Just so.

VISITOR: So he could fairly be said to share in cognitive knowledge. YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. VISITOR: But it belongs to him, I think, not to be finished and done once he's rendered judgment, the way the calculator was done — rather, he must go on giving each of the laborers the proper instruction, until they've completed what was assigned. YOUNG SOCRATES: Rightly said. VISITOR: So all such arts, and every art that goes along with calculation, are cognitive; but these two kinds differ from each other in judging versus commanding? YOUNG SOCRATES: They appear to. VISITOR: So if we divided the whole of cognitive knowledge, calling one part the commanding part and the other the judging part, would we say we'd divided it well? YOUNG SOCRATES: In my opinion, yes. VISITOR: And indeed, for people acting jointly on some task, agreement among themselves is a thing to be glad of. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. VISITOR: So as far as this goes, so long as we ourselves share the same view, we can let everyone else's opinions be — never mind them. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. VISITOR: Come then — in which of these two arts should we place the kingly art? In the judging one, as if the king were some kind of spectator, or rather should we set him down as belonging to the commanding art, since he is indeed one who rules? YOUNG SOCRATES: How could it be anything but the latter? VISITOR: Then we must look again at the commanding art, to see whether it too splits somewhere. And it seems to me it does, in something like this way: just as the trade of the retailer is marked off from that of the producer who sells his own goods, so too the kingly class seems to be marked off from the class of heralds. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so? VISITOR: Retailers, I take it, take over goods already sold once by others, and sell them again a second time. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite so. VISITOR: And in the same way the tribe of heralds, once given the thoughts of others to carry out, take them over and issue them again, a second time, as commands to others. YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true. VISITOR: Well then — shall we lump the kingly art together with the arts of interpreting, of giving the boatswain's call, of prophecy, of heralding, and many other arts akin to these, all of which have the giving of commands in common? Or would you rather, since we were making comparisons a moment ago, draw the comparison in name as well — since the class of those who command on their own account happens to be practically nameless — and divide things this way: setting the class of kings within the self-commanding art, and leaving all the rest aside, granting to others the task of finding some name for it? For it was for the sake of the ruler that we set out on this inquiry, not for the sake of his opposite.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. VISITOR: So then, since this class stands at a reasonable distance from those others, marked off from them by its distinctness, by belonging to itself, isn't it necessary to divide this very thing again, if we can still find some cut that yields within it? YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. VISITOR: And indeed we do seem to have one — follow along and help me make the cut. YOUNG SOCRATES: Where? VISITOR: All those we might think of as ruling by way of giving commands — won't we find that they command for the sake of bringing something into being? YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. VISITOR: And indeed it isn't at all hard to divide everything that comes into being into two. YOUNG SOCRATES: How? VISITOR: Of all such things, some are lifeless, and some are living. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. VISITOR: And it's by these very things that we'll cut the commanding part of cognitive knowledge, if we do want to cut it. YOUNG SOCRATES: On what basis? VISITOR: Assigning one part of it to oversee the coming-into-being of lifeless things, the other to oversee that of living things — and in this way the whole will already have been divided in two. YOUNG SOCRATES: Entirely so. VISITOR: Well then, let's set one of these two aside, and take up the other, and having taken it up let's divide the whole of it into two. YOUNG SOCRATES: Which of the two do you say we should take up? VISITOR: Surely the one concerned with commanding living creatures. For the kingly kind of knowledge is surely never one that oversees lifeless things — like the master-builder's art — but is nobler than that, always exercising its power among living creatures and concerning them. YOUNG SOCRATES: Rightly said. VISITOR: And as for the breeding and rearing of living creatures, one might observe that it comes in two forms: the rearing of a single creature, and the shared tending of creatures gathered in herds. YOUNG SOCRATES: Rightly said. VISITOR: But surely we won't find the statesman to be a rearer of a single creature, like a driver of a single ox or a groom of a single horse — he's more like one who tends a herd of horses or of cattle. YOUNG SOCRATES: That does appear to be so, now that it's been said. VISITOR: So shall we call this shared tending of many creatures together, within the rearing of living things, herd-rearing, or some sort of communal rearing? YOUNG SOCRATES: Whichever term happens to suit our discussion.

VISITOR: Well said, Socrates — and if you keep up this habit of not fussing over names, you'll turn out richer in wisdom by the time you're old. But for now — since you tell me to — that's what we must do. Do you see how one might show herd-rearing to be twofold, so that what is now sought within a double share will then be sought within a half? YOUNG SOCRATES: I'll try. It seems to me there's one kind of rearing for human beings, and another again for beasts. VISITOR: You've divided it with real eagerness and boldness — but let's not fall into the same trap again if we can help it. YOUNG SOCRATES: What trap? VISITOR: We shouldn't cut off one small part all by itself against many large parts, nor apart from its proper form — rather, the part should carry its form along with it. It's finest to separate what we're seeking straight off from everything else, provided the cut is a correct one — the way you, a little while ago, thought you had the right division and rushed the argument forward when you saw it heading toward human beings. But my friend, fine cutting isn't safe; it's safer to go through the middle when we cut, and that way one is more likely to hit upon real forms. This makes all the difference for our inquiries. YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean by that, stranger? VISITOR: I must try to put it still more plainly, out of goodwill toward your nature, Socrates. It's impossible to make everything fully clear right where we now stand, but I should try to carry the point a little further forward, for the sake of clarity. YOUNG SOCRATES: Then what do you mean we just did wrongly in our division? VISITOR: Something like this — as if someone, trying to divide the human race in two, cut it the way most people here do, setting apart the Greek race as one, separate from all the rest, and then, lumping together all the other races — countless, unmixed with one another, and speaking no common tongue — under the single name 'barbarian,' expects that because of this one name it must also be a single race. Or again, as if someone thought he were dividing number into two kinds by cutting off a myriad from the rest of all numbers, setting it apart as one form, and then, giving one name to everything left over on account of that name, claims that this too becomes some other single race, distinct from the first. It would surely be a finer division, and truer to real forms, and more properly a division in two, if one cut number into odd and even, and the human race, in turn, into male and female — and only set apart Lydians or Phrygians or some others against everyone else, whenever one could no longer find a way to divide off both a genuine kind and a genuine part at the same time.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite right. But tell me this, stranger — how could one grasp more clearly that a kind and a part are not the same thing, but different? STRANGER: My excellent friend, that's no small assignment you're setting me, Socrates. We've already wandered further from our main argument than we should have, and now you're asking us to wander even further. So for now, as is only sensible, let's turn back; we can chase that particular trail at our leisure another time. But do be on guard against one thing: never suppose you've heard a clear, settled account of it from me. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of what? STRANGER: That a form and a part are different from each other. YOUNG SOCRATES: What of it? STRANGER: Just this — whenever something is a form of a thing, it must also be a part of that thing of which it's called a form; but a part need not be a form. Always take me to be saying that, Socrates, whichever way suits better. YOUNG SOCRATES: Understood. STRANGER: Now tell me what comes next. YOUNG SOCRATES: What? STRANGER: The point where our wandering off led us here. I think it was mainly this — when asked how herd-rearing should be divided, you said, quite eagerly, that there are two kinds of living creature: the human kind, and one other made up of all the rest of the beasts together. YOUNG SOCRATES: True. STRANGER: And at the time you struck me as thinking that, by cutting off one part, you'd left the remainder as a single kind, because you had one name to give to all of them — you called them 'beasts.' YOUNG SOCRATES: That's how it was, yes. STRANGER: But consider, bravest of men — if somewhere there's some other intelligent creature, the crane for instance, or something of that sort, it might sort things the same way you did: setting up cranes as one kind, opposed to all other animals, and puffing itself up grandly, while lumping everything else together with humans and calling it nothing but 'beasts.' So let's try to guard against all mistakes of that kind. YOUNG SOCRATES: How? STRANGER: By not dividing the whole class of animals in two, so we're less likely to fall into that trap. YOUNG SOCRATES: No need to, indeed. STRANGER: And in fact that was exactly where we went wrong before. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so? STRANGER: The part of the directive kind of knowledge that concerned us was, I take it, some portion of the art of rearing living things — rearing them in herds. Right? YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: Well, even back then the whole animal kingdom had already been divided into tame and wild. Those with a nature that can be tamed are called domestic, those unwilling to be tamed, wild. YOUNG SOCRATES: Good. STRANGER: And the knowledge we're hunting for was, and still is, concerned with tame creatures — and must be sought among herd animals specifically. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: So let's not divide things the way we did before, looking at everything at once, and rushing to reach statesmanship quickly. That's exactly what got us into trouble just now. YOUNG SOCRATES: What trouble? STRANGER: The one the proverb describes — those who divide carefully but without haste get there faster. YOUNG SOCRATES: And a good thing it did, stranger. STRANGER: Let's leave that be, then. So, starting over from the beginning, let's try to divide the art of communal rearing. Perhaps the argument itself, once carried through to the point you're so eager for, will show it to you more clearly. Tell me this. YOUNG SOCRATES: What? STRANGER: Whether you've often heard about — I know you can't have come across it yourself — the taming of fish in the Nile, and in the royal fishponds. In springs and pools you may perhaps have noticed it yourself. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, I've actually seen that, and I've heard plenty about the other cases too. STRANGER: And what about goose-rearing and crane-rearing — even if you haven't wandered through the plains of Thessaly, you've certainly heard of it and believe it exists. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: I asked you all this for one reason: rearing in herds includes creatures of water and creatures that walk on dry land. YOUNG SOCRATES: So it does. STRANGER: Do you agree, then, that we should split the art of communal rearing along this line, assigning each part of it to one of these two, calling one water-rearing and the other land-rearing? YOUNG SOCRATES: I agree. STRANGER: And as for kingship, we won't even need to ask which of the two arts it belongs to — that's obvious to anyone. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: Everyone would divide the land-rearing branch of herd-rearing further. YOUNG SOCRATES: How? STRANGER: By distinguishing winged from earthbound. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite right. STRANGER: Now then — should statesmanship be sought among the earthbound? Or don't you think even the least sensible person would assume as much? YOUNG SOCRATES: I do. STRANGER: And the art of managing earthbound creatures, like the number we just cut, must be shown split in two. YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly.

STRANGER: And indeed, toward the very part our argument has been heading, two roads seem to stretch out before us: one shorter, cutting a small piece against a large one; the other holding more closely to what we said earlier — that we should cut as near the middle as possible — though it's the longer road. We can go whichever way we prefer. YOUNG SOCRATES: What, can't we take both? STRANGER: Not at the same time, remarkable fellow — but clearly we can take them one after the other. YOUNG SOCRATES: Then I choose both, one after the other. STRANGER: Easy enough, since what's left is short. But at the start, or halfway through the journey, that request would have been hard on us. As it stands now, since you prefer it this way, let's take the longer road first — we're still fresh, so we'll manage it more easily. And look at the division. YOUNG SOCRATES: Go on. STRANGER: The earthbound tame animals that live in herds are naturally divided in two. YOUNG SOCRATES: By what? STRANGER: By this: some are born hornless, others horn-bearing. YOUNG SOCRATES: Evidently. STRANGER: Now divide the art of managing earthbound creatures and assign it, giving an account in words for each part. If you try to name them, the result will be more tangled than it needs to be. YOUNG SOCRATES: Then how should I put it? STRANGER: Like this — the science of managing earthbound creatures, once split in two, has one branch set over the horned portion of the herd, the other over the hornless. YOUNG SOCRATES: Let's leave it stated that way; it's been made clear enough regardless. STRANGER: And plainly, our king tends some herd that's docked of horns. YOUNG SOCRATES: How could it be otherwise? STRANGER: Let's break this herd apart too, then, and try to render him his due. YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means. STRANGER: Do you want to divide it by cloven-footed versus what's called single-hoofed, or by cross-breeding versus breeding true to kind? You follow me, surely. YOUNG SOCRATES: Which? STRANGER: That horses and donkeys can naturally breed with one another. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: Whereas the rest of the smooth-coated tame herd doesn't interbreed across kinds. YOUNG SOCRATES: How could it? STRANGER: Well then — does the statesman appear to concern himself with a cross-breeding nature, or with one that breeds true? YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly the one that doesn't mix. STRANGER: This too, it seems, we must split in two, as we did before. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, we must.

STRANGER: And indeed, the tame, herding portion of the animal kingdom has now been chopped up entirely, except for two kinds. The dog family isn't worth counting among the herd animals. YOUNG SOCRATES: No indeed. But by what do we divide the remaining two? STRANGER: By the very standard it would be fitting for you and Theaetetus to use in dividing, since you both study geometry. YOUNG SOCRATES: By what? STRANGER: By the diagonal, of course, and again by the diagonal of the diagonal. YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean? STRANGER: The nature our human kind possesses — isn't it built for locomotion in just the way the diagonal is, whose square is two feet? YOUNG SOCRATES: Exactly so. STRANGER: And the remaining kind, in turn, has for its power a diagonal relative to our own power, since its nature squares to twice two feet. YOUNG SOCRATES: How could it be otherwise? And I think I follow pretty well what you mean to show. STRANGER: Besides this, Socrates, do we notice another thing that's happened in our divisions — the kind of thing that would win a good laugh? YOUNG SOCRATES: What? STRANGER: That our human kind has ended up sharing a lot and running the same course as the noblest and, at the same time, laziest of all creatures. YOUNG SOCRATES: I do notice it, and it's a strange result indeed. STRANGER: Well, isn't it natural for the slowest to arrive last? YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, that much is so. STRANGER: And don't we realize this too — that the king looks even more ridiculous, running alongside the herd, keeping pace with the man best trained for a life of ease? YOUNG SOCRATES: Absolutely so. STRANGER: For now, Socrates, that point made earlier in our inquiry into the sophist becomes clearer still. YOUNG SOCRATES: What point? STRANGER: That in this method of reasoning, no more care is given to the dignified than the undignified, nor is the smaller ever slighted in favor of the greater — the method always works out the truest answer purely on its own terms. YOUNG SOCRATES: So it seems. STRANGER: Then, so you don't beat me to asking about the shorter road that once led to the definition of the king, let me go there myself first. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, please do. STRANGER: I say we should have, right at that point, divided the earthbound straightaway into two-footed and four-footed; and then, seeing that the human kind shares its lot only with the winged, cut the two-footed herd again into the featherless and the feathered. Once that was cut, and the art of managing humans thereby made plain, we could bring the statesman and king forward — install him in it like a charioteer — and hand him the reins of the city as his own, since this science belongs to him.

YOUNG SOCRATES: You've paid off the argument handsomely, as if it were a debt, adding the digression as if it were interest, and squaring the whole account. STRANGER: Come then, let's link it all together, going back over the argument for the name of the statesman's art from beginning to end. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, let's. STRANGER: At the start, we had the directive part of the science of knowing. From this, a portion likened to it was called self-directive. Rearing living things split off as no small part of the self-directive; and rearing-in-herds was a form of that; and, in turn, land-based herd-management was a form of herd-rearing. From land-management, the art of tending the hornless nature was cut off in its turn. And of this, the part is necessarily woven together out of no fewer than three strands, if one wants to gather it under a single name — calling it the art of tending non-interbreeding creatures. What remains from this — the part still left over, applying to the two-footed flock — is human-management, and that alone is precisely what we were looking for, called at once kingship and statesmanship. YOUNG SOCRATES: Exactly so. STRANGER: But tell me, Socrates, is this really and truly accomplished the way you've just put it? YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean? STRANGER: That what was proposed has been stated fully and adequately? Or is this exactly where the inquiry falls short — that the argument has been stated after a fashion, but hasn't been worked out completely, all the way through? YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean by that? STRANGER: I'll try to show you, more clearly still, just what I have in mind. YOUNG SOCRATES: Go on, then. STRANGER: Now, among the many arts of herding that just appeared, statesmanship was one, and the care of one particular herd. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: And the argument defined this not as a tender of horses, nor of any other beasts, but as the science of communally rearing humans. YOUNG SOCRATES: Just so. STRANGER: Let's look now at what sets all herdsmen apart from kings. YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it? STRANGER: Whether any of the others, going under the name of some other art, claims and professes to be a fellow-rearer of the herd in common with the king. YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: Take merchants, farmers, millers, and besides them trainers and the whole tribe of doctors — you know they'd all fight us tooth and nail if we called the ones who tend to human affairs "statesmen," claiming that they themselves look after human nourishment, and not just the nourishment of the common herd but of the rulers too. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: Wouldn't they have a point? YOUNG SOCRATES: Perhaps. STRANGER: We'll examine that. But here's something we do know: no one will dispute any of this with a cowherd. The herdsman himself is the nurse of his herd, its doctor, its matchmaker so to speak, and the sole expert in midwifery for the births and labors of his animals. And as far as play and music go — whatever share of that his creatures have by nature — no one is better at soothing and charming them into calm, working the music of his own flock, whether with instruments or with his voice alone. It's the same way with every other kind of herdsman, isn't it? YOUNG SOCRATES: Exactly right. STRANGER: Then how can our account of the king look sound and unbroken, when we set him up as the sole herdsman and nurse of a human flock, picking him out from ten thousand rival claimants? YOUNG SOCRATES: It can't. STRANGER: So weren't we right a little while ago to worry that we might be describing some royal shape without yet having worked out the statesman with real precision — not until we strip away the crowd pressing in around him, all claiming a share in his pasturing, and separate him from them, showing him alone and clear? YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite right. STRANGER: Then that's what we must do, Socrates, if we're not going to disgrace our argument at the very end. YOUNG SOCRATES: We certainly must not let that happen. STRANGER: So we need to start again from a different point and travel by another road. YOUNG SOCRATES: Which road? STRANGER: One that mixes in a bit of play. We'll need to draw on a large portion of a great myth, and then, as before, keep cutting off part after part until we arrive at the very peak of what we're after. Shouldn't we? YOUNG SOCRATES: We certainly should. STRANGER: Then pay close attention to my story, the way children do — after all, you're not so many years past being a child yourself. YOUNG SOCRATES: Go on, then. STRANGER: Among the many things told of old — and still to be told — is the sign that appeared, so they say, in the quarrel between Atreus and Thyestes. You've heard it, and no doubt remember what they say happened then. YOUNG SOCRATES: You must mean the sign of the golden lamb.

STRANGER: Not at all — I mean the reversal of the sun's rising and setting, and of the other stars too: how the point from which the sun now rises was once the point where it set, and it used to rise from the opposite point — and how the god, bearing witness for Atreus, changed it to its present pattern. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, that story is told too. STRANGER: And again, we've all heard a great deal about the reign of Cronus. YOUNG SOCRATES: A very great deal. STRANGER: And what of the story that people in the earliest times sprang from the earth, rather than being born from one another? YOUNG SOCRATES: That too is one of the old tales. STRANGER: Well, all of these stem from a single event, along with countless others even more remarkable than these — but because so much time has passed, some of them have died out while others survive scattered, each told separately from the rest. But no one has told the event that is the cause of all of them, and now it must be told; for once told, it will fit perfectly with our demonstration about the king. YOUNG SOCRATES: An excellent point — tell it, and leave nothing out. STRANGER: Listen, then. This whole universe: at times the god himself guides it along its way and helps it turn in its circuit, and at other times he lets it go, whenever its revolutions have completed the measure of time appointed to it — and then it turns back again of its own accord in the opposite direction, being a living creature endowed with intelligence by the one who fitted it together from the beginning. Now this reversal of its motion is built into it of necessity, for the following reason. YOUNG SOCRATES: What reason is that? STRANGER: To remain always in the same condition and the same state, and to be perpetually the same, belongs only to the most divine things of all; the nature of body does not belong to that order. Now what we have named heaven and cosmos has received many blessed things from the one who begot it, but it has also had a share in body — and for that reason it is impossible for it to be entirely free of change throughout all time. Still, so far as it is able, it moves as much as possible in the same place with a single motion; hence it has been allotted the revolving motion, since that involves the least deviation from its own movement. But to turn itself, always by itself, is scarcely possible for anything except the one who leads all moving things; and for that leader to move it now one way, now the contrary way, is not permitted.

STRANGER: From all this, then, we must not say that the cosmos turns itself always by itself, nor again that it is turned in its two opposite revolutions entirely by god, nor yet that two gods with opposing intentions turn it in contrary directions. Rather — as was just said, and it's the only option left — at one time it is guided along by another, divine cause, receiving life anew and gaining renewed immortality from the craftsman; and at another time, when it is released, it goes by itself, having been let go at just the right moment so that it travels backward through many tens of thousands of revolutions, because, being so vast and so perfectly balanced, it moves on the smallest possible pivot. YOUNG SOCRATES: Well, everything you've described certainly seems to have been said with good reason. STRANGER: Then, reasoning it out, let's grasp together the event we said was the cause of all those marvels, from what has just been said. For here it is. YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it? STRANGER: That the motion of the universe is at one time carried in the direction it now revolves, and at another time in the opposite direction. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so? STRANGER: We must regard this reversal as the greatest and most complete of all the turnings that occur in the heavens. YOUNG SOCRATES: So it seems. STRANGER: Then we should also think that the greatest changes occur at that time for us who dwell within it. YOUNG SOCRATES: That's likely too. STRANGER: And don't we know that the nature of living things has a hard time enduring great, many, and manifold changes occurring all at once? YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: So at that time, tremendous destruction of the other living things necessarily occurs, and the human race in particular is reduced to a small remnant. And around these survivors many other strange and unheard-of things happen, but the greatest is this, which follows directly from the reversal of the whole universe, whenever the turning opposite to the one now established occurs. YOUNG SOCRATES: What is that? STRANGER: Whatever age each living creature had reached, this first came to a stop for all of them, and everything mortal ceased advancing toward looking older; instead, reversing course, it grew younger and more tender again. The white hair of the old turned black; the cheeks of the bearded grew smooth again, restoring each man to his bygone prime; the bodies of the young men, growing smooth and smaller day by day and night by night, returned again to the nature of a newborn child, becoming like one in both soul and body; and from that point, withering away entirely, they vanished altogether. As for those who died violently in that time, the corpse underwent these same changes, but rapidly, and was destroyed unseen within a few days.

YOUNG SOCRATES: And what was the birth of living things at that time, Stranger? In what way did they beget one another? STRANGER: Clearly, Socrates, birth from one another did not occur in that order of nature — rather, the earthborn race, the one said once to have existed, was exactly this: those who, in that time, turned back again out of the earth. This was remembered by our earliest ancestors, who bordered on the end of the previous revolution and were born at the very start of this one; for they were the ones who became heralds of these accounts to us, accounts that are now wrongly disbelieved by many. For I think we must consider the sequel: it follows from the elders returning to the nature of a child that, in turn, those who had died and lay in the earth should be formed again there and come back to life, following the reversal, as generation itself is cycled back in the opposite direction — and that these, being born from the earth by necessity, according to this account, bear that name and description, all of them, except those whom a god carried off to some other lot. YOUNG SOCRATES: This certainly follows from what came before. But the life you say belonged to the power of Cronus — did it fall within that earlier turning or within this present one? For as for the change in the stars and the sun, it clearly happens, you say, in both turnings alike. STRANGER: You've followed the argument well. As for what you asked about everything coming to human beings of its own accord — that belongs least of all to the motion now established; it too belonged to the earlier one. For then, first, god himself took charge of the whole revolution, watching over it; and likewise, region by region, all the parts of the cosmos were divided up under the care of gods who ruled them. The animals too were divided by kind and by herd among divine spirits acting as herdsmen, each spirit sufficient in every respect for those under his own charge, so that there was no wildness among them, nor any preying of one on another, nor war, nor strife of any kind whatsoever. There would be countless other things to mention that follow from that kind of ordering. As for what was said about human beings living a life that came of its own accord, it was said for the following reason.

STRANGER: A god himself pastured them, taking charge in person, just as now human beings, being another kind of creature more divine than the rest, pasture other, lesser kinds. Under his tending there were no constitutions of states, nor possession of wives and children; for all rose up again out of the earth, with no memory of their former lives. Such institutions were entirely absent, but they had fruit in abundance from trees and much other timber, not raised by cultivation but produced by the earth of its own accord. Naked, and without bedding, they pastured for the most part in the open air, for the seasons were tempered for them so as to cause no distress, and they had soft beds in the abundant grass that sprang up for them from the earth. This, Socrates, is the life you hear of as belonging to the age of Cronus; the life said to belong to the age of Zeus — the present one — you know firsthand, since you are living in it. Could you, and would you, be willing to judge which of the two is the happier? YOUNG SOCRATES: I could not. STRANGER: Would you like me to sort it out for you in a way? YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means. STRANGER: Well then: if the nurslings of Cronus, having so much leisure and such power to converse not only with human beings but with animals as well, used all of this for philosophy — conversing with the animals and with one another, and inquiring of every nature whether any creature, having some power of its own, perceived anything different from the others for the gathering of wisdom — it's easy to judge that the people of that time were immeasurably better off than those of today. But if, stuffed full to bursting with food and drink, they simply told each other and the animals the sort of tales that are told about them even now, then that too, in my judgment at least, is easy to judge. Still, let's set this aside until some sufficient informant appears to tell us which way the desires of the people of that time ran, regarding knowledge and the use of speech. But we must say why we raised the myth in the first place, so that we can move the argument forward from here. For when the time of all these things was completed and change had to occur, and indeed the whole earthborn race was already used up — each soul having paid out all its births, as many as had been appointed to it, having fallen as seed into the earth the requisite number of times — then the pilot of the universe, letting go of the tiller as it were, withdrew to his own place of observation, and fate and innate desire turned the cosmos back again.

STRANGER: So all the gods who governed the different regions under the greatest god, once they recognized what was happening, released the parts of the universe from their care. And the universe itself reversed course, colliding start against end, driving itself in the opposite direction, and in shaking itself violently it brought about yet another destruction of living things of every kind. After that, once enough time had passed, the turmoil and disturbance settled down, the shaking gave way to calm, and the universe fell back into its accustomed orbit, ordering itself, taking charge and control of itself and its own contents, remembering as best it could the teaching of its craftsman and father. At first it carried this out quite precisely, but toward the end more sluggishly. The cause of this was the bodily element in its makeup, the element bred into it from its ancient nature long ago, since it had shared in a great deal of disorder before arriving at the present ordered state. From its composer it has acquired everything beautiful, but from its previous condition it retains, and produces in the creatures within it, all the harsh and unjust things that occur in the heavens. So long as it raised its creatures together with its helmsman, it produced little that was bad and much that was good; but once separated from him, in the time right after its release it manages everything most beautifully, but as time goes on and forgetfulness grows within it, the ancient condition of disharmony gains the upper hand more and more, and as time draws to its end this disharmony flowers fully, and mixing in only a little good with a great deal of its opposite, the universe comes to the brink of destroying itself and everything within it. That is why, at that point, the god who set it in order, seeing it in distress and caring for it so that it should not be tossed about by confusion, break apart, and sink into the boundless sea of dissimilarity, takes his place again at the helm, turns back what had fallen sick and come apart in its previous cycle under its own power, sets it right, and makes it deathless and ageless. That, then, is the end of the whole account. But for demonstrating what the king is, what has been said already is enough if we take hold of the argument from there. For when the universe turned back onto the path toward the present kind of generation, the aging process stopped again and reversed, and produced results opposite and new compared to what came before. Creatures that had almost vanished from smallness began to grow, while the bodies newly born from the earth, gray-haired at birth, died and returned again to the earth.

STRANGER: And everything else changed as well, imitating and following along with what the universe as a whole was undergoing—and in particular the pattern of conception, birth, and nurture had to follow suit in every creature, out of necessity. For it was no longer possible for a living thing to be formed in the earth through the combined action of others; rather, just as the universe had been ordered to be in full command of its own course, so in the same way its parts too were now ordered, so far as possible, to grow, beget, and nourish themselves through their own agency, under the same guiding principle. Now we have arrived at the very point toward which the whole account has been driving. As for the other animals, there would be a great deal to say about the various causes behind each one's transformation, but concerning human beings the story is shorter and more to the point. Once deprived of the care of the guardian spirit who had possessed and tended us, and with most of the wild animals—those of savage nature—turning fierce, while we ourselves, weak and unguarded, were being torn apart by them, and still helpless and unskilled in the earliest times, since the food that had once grown of itself had run out and we did not yet know how to provide for ourselves, having never before been forced by need to do so—for all these reasons we were in dire straits. That is why the gifts from the gods spoken of in the old stories were given to us, along with the instruction and training necessary to use them: fire from Prometheus, crafts from Hephaestus and his fellow craftswoman, seeds and plants from others still. And everything that has gone into equipping human life has come from these gifts, since, as I just said, the care that came from the gods failed us, and we had to take charge of directing and caring for ourselves, just like the universe as a whole—which we imitate and follow throughout all time, living and growing now in this way, now in that. Let that be the end of the story. We will put it to use in seeing just how far we went wrong in describing the king and statesman in our earlier discussion. YOUNG SOCRATES: Well then, how great a mistake do you say we made? STRANGER: In one respect a smaller one, but in another a very serious one indeed, and far greater and more extensive than before. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so?

STRANGER: In this respect: when asked about the king and statesman who belongs to the present cycle and generation, we instead described the shepherd of the human flock from the opposite cycle, a god rather than a mortal—there we went badly astray. But in showing him as ruler of the whole city, even though we did not specify the manner of his rule, what we said was true, though not complete or clear, so our error there was smaller than the other one. YOUNG SOCRATES: True. STRANGER: So it seems we must define the manner of ruling the city precisely, before we can expect the statesman to have been fully described for us. YOUNG SOCRATES: Well put. STRANGER: And that is exactly why we brought in the myth—so that it might show, regarding the rearing of a herd, not merely that everyone now disputes this role with the one we are seeking, but so that we might see more clearly that one alone who deserves this title, on the model of shepherds and cowherds, as having charge of the nurture of human beings. YOUNG SOCRATES: Correct. STRANGER: But I think, Socrates, that this figure of the divine herdsman is too grand a thing to be called merely a king, while the statesmen who exist here now are much more like their subjects in nature, and share much more nearly in their upbringing and education. YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. STRANGER: Yet they would have to be sought out no less and no more, whichever nature they happen to have. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: Let's go back to this point again. We said there was an art of self-directed command over living creatures, exercised not privately but in common, and we called it right then the art of herd-rearing—do you remember? YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: Well, it was somewhere in this that we went wrong. We never actually captured the statesman or gave him a name—he slipped past us unnoticed under that label. YOUNG SOCRATES: How? STRANGER: All the other herdsmen share in the rearing of their particular flocks, but we applied the name to the statesman as though it belonged to him alone, when we ought to have applied some term common to all of them together. YOUNG SOCRATES: True, if there really is such a common term. STRANGER: And isn't 'caring for' something common to all of them, regardless of whether we specify 'feeding' or some other particular activity? If we had called it something like 'herd-tending' or 'caretaking' or simply 'oversight,' we could have wrapped the statesman together with all the others under it, since that is what the argument called for.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Right. But then how would the next division have gone? STRANGER: Along the same lines by which we earlier divided herd-rearing into land-dwelling and winged, mixed-breeding and pure-breeding—dividing herd-tending by these same distinctions, we would have covered both the present kingship and the reign under Cronus alike within our account. YOUNG SOCRATES: So it appears. But now I'm wondering what would come next. STRANGER: Clearly, if we had used the term 'herd-tending' in this way, no one could ever have objected that there is no such thing as care at all—as was rightly objected before, that there was no art among us worthy of the name 'nurture,' and that if there were one, it would belong to many others before any king. YOUNG SOCRATES: Correct. STRANGER: But no other art would claim to be more entitled, or prior in claim, to care for the entire human community than the art of kingship, exercising rule over all human beings. YOUNG SOCRATES: You're right. STRANGER: Now after this, Socrates, do we notice that we made yet another serious error, right at the very conclusion? YOUNG SOCRATES: What was that? STRANGER: This: even granting that we had thought through, as clearly as possible, that there is some art of nurturing the two-footed herd, that alone gave us no more right to call it kingship or statesmanship straightaway, as though it were already complete. YOUNG SOCRATES: What then? STRANGER: First, as I said, we needed to rework the name, directing it more toward care than toward nurture, and then divide this art of care—for it would still admit of divisions that are not small. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of what sort? STRANGER: We would have separated, I think, the divine herdsman from the human caretaker. YOUNG SOCRATES: Correct. STRANGER: And again, the caretaking assigned to humans would need to be divided in two. YOUNG SOCRATES: By what? STRANGER: By force and by consent. YOUNG SOCRATES: Why so? STRANGER: Because it was right here that we made our earlier mistake, too naively lumping together king and tyrant, when they and their manner of ruling are utterly unlike one another. YOUNG SOCRATES: True. STRANGER: Now, correcting ourselves as I said, let's divide human caretaking in two, by force and by consent. YOUNG SOCRATES: Absolutely. STRANGER: And let's call the caretaking exercised by force tyranny, and the caretaking of willing two-footed creatures, exercised with their consent, statesmanship—and then declare that the one who possesses this art and this kind of care is truly king and statesman.

YOUNG SOCRATES: And it does seem, stranger, that our demonstration concerning the statesman would now be complete on this basis. STRANGER: That would be good for us, Socrates. But it shouldn't seem so to you alone—I need to share that conviction with you. As it stands, in my own judgment, the king still doesn't appear to have taken on his complete shape for us. Rather, like sculptors who sometimes, in their haste at an inopportune moment, pile on more and bigger details than necessary in each part of the work and so end up slowing themselves down—so too we, wanting to show quickly and impressively the mistake in our earlier account, thought it fitting to construct grand illustrations for the king, took up an amazing mass of myth, and were forced to use more of it than was necessary. That's why we've made our demonstration too long, and haven't brought the myth to a proper conclusion at all—our discussion is simply like a painted creature that seems to have an adequate outline, but hasn't yet received the vividness that comes from pigments and the blending of colors. Yet for those capable of following it, speech and reasoned account are a better way to display any living thing than painting or any craft using the hands; for everyone else, working with the hands is better. YOUNG SOCRATES: That's right. But show me where you say our account still hasn't been given adequately. STRANGER: It's difficult, my friend, to demonstrate anything of importance well without using illustrations. It seems each of us, in a way, knows everything as if in a dream, and then again is utterly ignorant of it all as if wide awake. YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean by that? STRANGER: I really do seem to have stirred up, rather strangely, just now, our shared condition regarding knowledge. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so? STRANGER: My good man, the illustration I used itself now stands in need of an illustration. YOUNG SOCRATES: Well then? Go on, don't hold back on my account. STRANGER: I must speak, since you're ready to follow along. We know that children, once they've just become familiar with their letters— YOUNG SOCRATES: What about them? STRANGER: That they can distinguish each letter well enough within the shortest and easiest syllables, and are able to state the truth about them.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. VISITOR: And when people are confused about these same letters in other combinations, they again fall into false judgment and false statement about them. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite so. VISITOR: Then isn't this the easiest and finest way to lead people toward the things they don't yet know? YOUNG SOCRATES: What way? VISITOR: To bring them back first to the cases where they judged these same letters correctly, and having brought them back, to set that alongside the things not yet known, comparing the two and showing that the same likeness and nature is present in both combinations—until the things truly judged have been set beside all the things not yet known and shown to match them. And once shown in this way, becoming models of this kind, they make it so that every one of the elements, in every syllable, is called one thing insofar as it differs from the others, and the same thing insofar as it is always consistently itself. YOUNG SOCRATES: Absolutely. VISITOR: So we've grasped this well enough: a model comes into being whenever something that is the same, correctly judged in some other, separate case, is brought together with the first case, so that the two together produce a single true judgment. YOUNG SOCRATES: So it appears. VISITOR: Then should we be surprised if our soul, having this same natural experience with the elements of all things, sometimes settles into truth about each one in certain combinations, and sometimes again is carried astray about all of them in others—correctly judging some of the combinations in one way or another, but when they're shifted into the long and difficult syllables of actual things, failing to recognize these same elements all over again? YOUNG SOCRATES: Not surprising at all. VISITOR: For how, my friend, could someone who starts from a false judgment ever arrive at even a small portion of the truth and gain understanding? YOUNG SOCRATES: Hardly at all. VISITOR: So if this is how things naturally work, you and I would do nothing wrong by first attempting to see the nature of a whole pattern in some other small pattern, taken part by part, and then afterward, intending to carry that same form—now grown to its greatest size—over from the smaller cases, attempting through this model to recognize by art the proper care of a city, so that we might have waking knowledge instead of a dream. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite right.

VISITOR: We must pick up the earlier argument again: since countless people dispute the kingly class's claim to the care of cities, we said we need to separate out all of them and leave only that one figure, and for this we said we needed some kind of model. YOUNG SOCRATES: Indeed. VISITOR: What model, then, having the same character as statesmanship, could someone set out—as small as possible—and thereby adequately discover what we're looking for? Would you like it, Socrates, in Zeus's name, if we have nothing else ready to hand, if we choose the art of weaving? And even that, if you agree, not the whole of it—perhaps the part concerned with woven woolen garments will be enough. For maybe even this portion of it, once chosen, will bear witness to what we want. YOUNG SOCRATES: Why not? VISITOR: Then why don't we do with weaving what we did before—dividing part from part each time—and now, going through everything as quickly and briefly as possible, come back around to what's useful right now? YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean? VISITOR: I'll make the very walk-through my answer to you. YOUNG SOCRATES: Well said. VISITOR: Everything we make or acquire, then, falls into two kinds: things made for the sake of doing something, and defensive things made so as not to suffer something. And of the defensive things, some are remedies—both divine and human—and others are protections. And of protections, some are weapons for war, others are barriers. And of barriers, some are curtains, others are shelters against storms and heat. And of shelters, some are roofs, others are coverings. And of coverings, some are undercoverings, others are wraps. And of wraps, some are cut whole from a single piece, others are composite. And of composite ones, some are pierced and stitched, others bound together without piercing. And of the unpierced ones, some use plant fibers from the ground, others use hair. And of hair coverings, some are glued together with water and earth, others are bound to themselves alone. Now these defenses and coverings made from materials bound to themselves we've named 'garments.' And the art that cares most for garments—just as before we called the art of the city 'statesmanship'—let's now, from the thing itself, call this 'garment-making.' And let's say that weaving, insofar as it concerned the greatest part of garment production, differs from this garment-making art in name only—just as before, kingship differed from statesmanship only in name?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite right. VISITOR: The next thing to work out is this: someone might think that calling it 'garment-weaving' in this way has been said adequately, without being able to see that it hasn't yet been distinguished from its close collaborators, though it has been separated from many other related arts. YOUNG SOCRATES: Tell me, related to what? VISITOR: You haven't followed what's been said, it seems—so we'd better go back and start from the end. If you keep in mind the kinship, you'll see we just now cut off from it the making of bedcoverings, separating it by the notions of wrapping-around and laying-under. YOUNG SOCRATES: I understand. VISITOR: And we also removed all the craft that works with flax and hemp and everything else we just called plant fibers. And we separated off felting, and the kind of composition that uses piercing and stitching, most of which is shoemaking. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite so. VISITOR: And we removed the care of coverings cut whole from a single piece—leatherworking—and all the arts concerned with roofs, whatever is involved in holding back the elements in building and carpentry as a whole and other arts; and all the arts of barriers that provide protection against theft and violence, involved in the making of lids and the fitting of doors, allotted as parts of the carpenter's craft; and we cut off armor-making, being a part of the great and varied power of making defenses; and indeed we distinguished the whole art of magic concerning remedies right at the start. And we've been left, it seems, with just what we were looking for: the art that works woolen protection against storms, called by the name weaving. YOUNG SOCRATES: So it seems.

VISITOR: But this hasn't yet been said completely, my boy. For whoever first sets to work on making garments appears to do the opposite of weaving. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so? VISITOR: Weaving is, in a way, a kind of interlacing. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. VISITOR: But the other is a separating of what's compacted and pressed together. YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean? VISITOR: The work of the carding art. Or shall we dare to call carding weaving, and the carder a weaver? YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not. VISITOR: And again, if someone calls the making of warp and weft weaving, he's using a strange and false name. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. VISITOR: Well then—should we say that fulling and mending have no share in the care and tending of clothing, or should we call all these weaving too? YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not. VISITOR: Yet all of these will dispute with the power of weaving over the tending and production of garments, granting the greatest part to weaving but also claiming a great deal for themselves. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite so. VISITOR: Besides these, we must also reckon that the arts making the tools by which the works of weaving are accomplished should be considered joint causes of every woven thing. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite right. VISITOR: So will our account of weaving—of the part we chose—be adequately defined if we set it down as the finest and greatest of all the arts of caring for woolen clothing? Or would we be saying something true but not yet clear or complete, until we've stripped away all these other arts from it as well? YOUNG SOCRATES: Right. VISITOR: Then shouldn't we do next what we're describing, so our account proceeds in order? YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. VISITOR: First, then, let's observe that there are two arts involved in everything that's done. YOUNG SOCRATES: Which two? VISITOR: One that is a joint cause of coming-into-being, and one that is the cause itself. YOUNG SOCRATES: How do you mean? VISITOR: Whatever arts don't produce the thing itself but supply tools to the arts that do—tools without which the task assigned to each art could never be carried out—these are joint causes; but the arts that produce the thing itself are the causes. YOUNG SOCRATES: That makes sense, anyway. VISITOR: After this, then, shall we call all the arts concerned with spindles, shuttles, and whatever other tools share in the production of clothing, joint causes, and the arts that actually tend and produce the clothing itself, causes? YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite right.

VISITOR: Of the causes, then, washing and mending and all the care given to these matters—since there's a great deal of grooming involved—it's reasonable to gather up that whole portion under one name and call it the art of fulling. YOUNG SOCRATES: Well put. VISITOR: And carding, and spinning, and all the parts concerned with the actual making of the clothing we're talking about, are one single art among all those commonly named: wool-working. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. VISITOR: Now wool-working has two divisions, and each of these two is at the same time a part of two other arts. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so? VISITOR: Carding, and half of shuttle-work, and everything that separates things joined together—all of this, taken as one, belongs to wool-working, and there are two great arts running through everything: the art of combining and the art of separating. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. VISITOR: To separating, then, belong carding and everything just mentioned. For the separating done among wool and warp threads—done one way with the shuttle, another way by hand—has received all the names just given. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite so. VISITOR: Now let's again take up the part that is at once a part of combining and of wool-working; and let's set aside everything there that belonged to separating, dividing wool-working in two, into the separating part and the combining part. YOUNG SOCRATES: Let it be divided. VISITOR: Now you must divide again, Socrates, the combining part that is also a part of wool-working, if we're going to adequately grasp the weaving we set out to define. YOUNG SOCRATES: We must indeed. VISITOR: We must indeed—so let's say that one part of it is twisting, the other interlacing. YOUNG SOCRATES: Do I follow, then? You seem to me to mean by twisting the working of the warp thread. VISITOR: Not only that, but of the weft as well—or shall we find some way its production happens without twisting? YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not. VISITOR: Then define each of these two as well—the distinction may prove timely for you. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so? VISITOR: Like this: of the works of carding, we call the part that has been drawn out lengthwise and given width a 'sliver,' don't we? YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. VISITOR: And of this, the part twisted by the spindle and made into a solid thread—call this thread the warp, and call the art that straightens it out the art of warp-spinning. YOUNG SOCRATES: Right.

STRANGER: Now as for whatever fibers take on a loose twist, and by the interweaving of the warp acquire just the right softness relative to the pull of carding — let's call the spun result of this the weft, and the craft assigned to work it the weft-spinning art. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite right. STRANGER: And indeed the part of weaving we originally set out to find should now be clear to everyone. For when the combining branch of wool-working produces, by the straight interlacing of weft and warp, a woven fabric, we call the whole woven result a woolen garment, and the craft responsible for it we call weaving. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite right. STRANGER: Well then — why on earth didn't we simply answer straightaway that weaving is the interlacing of weft and warp, instead of going round and round making countless distinctions for nothing? YOUNG SOCRATES: For my part, Stranger, none of what was said struck me as pointless. STRANGER: And no wonder — though it might well strike you that way before long, my good man. Against that kind of complaint, should it come over you again later — and it very well might — hear an argument that applies to all cases of this sort. YOUNG SOCRATES: Just tell me. STRANGER: First, then, let's look at excess and deficiency across the board, so that we can properly praise or blame, according to reason, whatever is said at greater length than it should be on any given occasion, and the opposite, in discussions of this kind. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, we should. STRANGER: Well, I think the argument we need concerns exactly these things. YOUNG SOCRATES: Which things? STRANGER: Length and shortness, and excess and deficiency generally — since the art of measurement, I take it, covers all of these. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: Let's divide it, then, into two parts — for that's what we need for our present purpose. YOUNG SOCRATES: Tell me how you'd divide it. STRANGER: Like this: one part concerns the mutual relation of largeness and smallness to each other, the other concerns their necessary relation to the coming-into-being of things. YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean? STRANGER: Don't you think it's natural to say that the larger must be called larger than nothing except the smaller, and the smaller in turn smaller than the larger, and nothing else? YOUNG SOCRATES: I do. STRANGER: But what about this — won't we also say that whatever exceeds the nature of the moderate, or is exceeded by it, in words or in deeds, really does come about as such, and that it's precisely here that the bad among us differ most from the good? YOUNG SOCRATES: It appears so. STRANGER: So we must posit these as two distinct realities and two distinct standards of judging the great and the small, not — as we said just now — only in relation to each other, but rather, as has just been said, one relation to be spoken of as mutual, the other as relative to the moderate. And would you like to learn why? YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course.

STRANGER: If one lets the nature of the greater be relative to nothing but the lesser, it will never be relative to the moderate — isn't that so? YOUNG SOCRATES: Just so. STRANGER: Then won't we destroy the arts themselves and all their works by this argument, and in particular make vanish both the statesmanship we're now seeking and the weaving we spoke of? For surely all such arts guard against more and less relative to the moderate, not as something that isn't but as something that is, and hard to manage in practice — and it's by preserving measure in this way that they produce everything good and beautiful. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: So if we make statesmanship vanish, won't our subsequent search for the kingly science become impossible? YOUNG SOCRATES: Very much so. STRANGER: So then, just as in the Sophist we forced not-being to exist, since our argument escaped us on that point, shouldn't we now likewise force the more and the less to become measurable, not only relative to each other but also relative to the coming-into-being of the moderate? For it's simply not possible for anyone to have become, beyond dispute, a statesman or any other expert in matters of action, without this being agreed upon. YOUNG SOCRATES: Then we should do exactly the same thing now, as much as possible. STRANGER: This task, Socrates, is even bigger than that one — and yet we remember how long that one was — but it's quite fair to posit something like this about them. YOUNG SOCRATES: What sort of thing? STRANGER: That at some point we'll need what's just been said for a precise demonstration about the thing itself. But that it's nicely and adequately shown for our present purposes — that, I think, is a point this argument helps us with magnificently: namely, that we must hold all the arts alike to be such that greater and lesser are measured not only relative to each other but also relative to the coming-into-being of the moderate. For if this exists, those other things exist, and if those exist, this exists too — but if neither of the two existed, neither would ever come to be. YOUNG SOCRATES: That's right — but what comes after this? STRANGER: Clearly we should divide the art of measurement, as was said, cutting it in two this way: setting one part as covering all the arts that measure number, lengths, depths, breadths, and speeds relative to their opposites, and the other as covering those that measure relative to the moderate, the fitting, the timely, the needful, and everything else that has settled in the middle, away from the extremes. YOUNG SOCRATES: And you've named two big divisions, quite different from each other.

STRANGER: Because, Socrates, what many clever people sometimes say — thinking they're stating something wise — namely that the art of measurement covers everything that comes to be, is in fact exactly what's just been said. For in a sense everything that falls under any art does partake of measurement of some kind; but because people aren't in the habit of examining things by dividing them into kinds, they lump together things that differ this much, thinking them alike right away, and conversely do the opposite of this — failing to divide other things into their parts, when what's needed is: whenever one first perceives the community shared by many things, not to give up before seeing within it all the differences that lie in distinct kinds, and again, when all sorts of dissimilarities are seen among a multitude, not to be able to stop, put off by that, before one has fenced in all the related things within a single likeness and enclosed them in the being of some one kind. Let this suffice, then, on these matters and on deficiencies and excesses — let's just keep in mind that two kinds concerning them have been discovered within the art of measurement, and let's remember what we say they are. YOUNG SOCRATES: We'll remember. STRANGER: After this argument, let's take up another one, concerning both the very things we're investigating and the whole practice of discussions of this kind. YOUNG SOCRATES: What sort of thing? STRANGER: Suppose someone asked us about the session where learners study their letters — whenever someone is asked what letters a given word consists of, should we say the question is being asked for the sake of that one word set before him, rather than for the sake of becoming more literate about all the words that might be proposed? YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly for the sake of all of them. STRANGER: Well then, what about our present inquiry concerning the statesman? Has it been proposed for its own sake, rather than for the sake of becoming more skilled in dialectic about everything? YOUNG SOCRATES: That too is clearly for the sake of everything. STRANGER: Surely no one with any sense would want to go hunting for the account of weaving itself for its own sake. But I think most people fail to notice that for some things that exist, there are perceptible likenesses readily grasped, which are easy to point out — whenever someone wants to show them easily, without trouble, to a person who asks for an account of something, apart from any laborious explanation. But for the things that are greatest and most precious, there exists no image wrought clearly for men to see, by pointing to which one could satisfy the soul of the questioner adequately, fitting it to one of the senses.

STRANGER: That's why one must practice being able to give and receive an account of each thing. For the things without body, which are the finest and greatest, are shown clearly by reason alone and by nothing else, and it's for the sake of these that everything now being said exists. And practice is easier, on every subject, when dealing with smaller things rather than with greater ones. YOUNG SOCRATES: Well put. STRANGER: Let's recall, then, for whose sake all this was said. YOUNG SOCRATES: For whose sake? STRANGER: Not least for the sake of this very difficulty which we accepted, reluctantly, over the long-windedness we allowed regarding weaving, and over the unrolling of the universe, and over the sophist and the being of not-being — noticing how much length these took, and reproaching ourselves over all of it, afraid we might be saying things both superfluous and long. So that we may suffer nothing of the kind again in future, say that all this was said on our part for the sake of exactly this. YOUNG SOCRATES: So be it. Just go on with what comes next. STRANGER: I say, then, that you and I must keep in mind what's just been said, and on every occasion form our praise and blame of brevity and length in our discussions not by judging lengths against each other, but by that part of the art of measurement which we said we needed to remember — relative to what is fitting. YOUNG SOCRATES: Right.

STRANGER: Not even relative to that, in every respect. For we won't need any length that's fitted to pleasure — except perhaps as a side matter — and as for what's fitted to the search for the thing proposed, so that we might find it as easily and quickly as possible, the argument bids us hold that as secondary, not primary; but far more, and first of all, to honor the method itself of being able to divide by kinds. And indeed, if an account, however immensely long when spoken, makes the hearer better at discovery, we should take that account seriously and not be at all vexed by its length — and likewise if it's shorter. And further still, as for anyone who finds fault with such gatherings for the length of their discussions and doesn't approve of the circling round in their course, that person shouldn't be let off so quickly and readily, merely blaming what's been said as long, but should also be expected to show, in addition, that if it had been shorter it would have made those present more skilled in dialectic and better at discovering the disclosure of things through reason — and as for any other blame or praise on other, unrelated matters, we shouldn't care about them at all, nor even pretend to listen to such talk. And enough of this, if you agree with me on it too. Let's go back to the statesman, bringing to bear on him the example of weaving as previously described. YOUNG SOCRATES: Well said — let's do as you say. STRANGER: Well then, the king has been separated off from the many herding arts — or rather, from all the arts concerned with herds in general. What remains, we say, are the arts within the city itself, both the contributory causes and the actual causes, which we must first divide from one another. YOUNG SOCRATES: Right. STRANGER: Do you realize it's hard to cut them in two? The reason, I think, will become no less clear as we go on. YOUNG SOCRATES: Then we should proceed that way. STRANGER: Let's divide them limb by limb, then, like a sacrificial animal, since we can't cut them in two — for one should always cut into the nearest possible number. YOUNG SOCRATES: How should we proceed now? STRANGER: Just as before: all the things that supplied instruments for weaving, we set down then, surely, as contributory causes. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: And now we must do this same thing, only even more so than then. For all the things that produce any instrument, small or great, within the city, must be set down as contributory causes. For without these there could never be a city, nor statesmanship — yet we surely won't assign any of them as a work of the kingly art. YOUNG SOCRATES: No, indeed. STRANGER: And yet we're attempting something hard, in separating off this class from the others. For whatever exists among beings, it's plausible enough, in saying it's the instrument of some one thing, to seem to have said something convincing. Still, let's state this other point about the possessions found in a city. YOUNG SOCRATES: What point? STRANGER: That it doesn't have this same capacity. For it isn't fashioned for the sake of causing something to come to be, as an instrument is, but for the sake of preserving what has been made. YOUNG SOCRATES: What sort of thing do you mean?

STRANGER: Now this — the vessel, worked into every possible shape out of dry and wet materials, with fire or without it, which we address by a single name — that too is a very large class, and, I think, has nothing whatever to do with the knowledge we're after. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course not. STRANGER: There is a third class of possessions, quite vast, that we must examine: things that move on land and in water, some wandering about and some fixed in place, some honored and some not, all sharing one name because each exists to be a seat for something — a support that always becomes a resting-place for someone. YOUNG SOCRATES: Which class is that? STRANGER: We call it the vehicle — hardly the work of statesmanship, but rather very much the business of carpentry, pottery, and bronze-working. YOUNG SOCRATES: I follow. STRANGER: What of a fourth? Shouldn't we call it distinct from these — the class holding most of the things named long ago: all clothing, most weapons, walls, and every kind of earthen or stone covering, and countless other things besides? Since all of it is made for the sake of defense, it would most justly be called, as a whole, a defense-work, and would be considered rather more the product of the builder's and the weaver's arts than of statesmanship. YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. STRANGER: And should we set down as a fifth class everything to do with ornament and painting, and all the imitations produced with the help of these and of music, made solely for our pleasure, which could rightly be gathered under a single name? YOUNG SOCRATES: What name? STRANGER: I think it's called plaything, in some sense. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: This one name, then, will suit them all when applied — for none of them is done for any serious purpose, but all for the sake of play. YOUNG SOCRATES: I follow that too, more or less. STRANGER: And what supplies bodies to all these things — the material out of which, and within which, all the crafts so far named do their work — being itself, in its many varieties, the offspring of many other crafts — shouldn't we set that down as a sixth class? YOUNG SOCRATES: What exactly do you mean? STRANGER: Gold and silver and everything that is mined, and everything that tree-felling and all manner of cutting supply to carpentry and basket-weaving; and further, the stripping of bark from plants, and the tanner's craft that strips the hides from living bodies, and all the crafts concerned with such things, and the makers of cork and papyrus and cordage, which supply the means for producing composite kinds out of things not themselves composite. All this together we call the primary possession of mankind — uncompounded, and in no way the work of the royal science. YOUNG SOCRATES: Well put.

STRANGER: Now the acquiring of nourishment, and everything that mixes into the body, part with part, to serve some bodily function — we should call this, naming it as one whole, our nourisher, as a seventh class, unless we have something better to call it. And we will more correctly assign the whole of it to farming, hunting, gymnastics, medicine, and cookery than to statesmanship. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: So then, nearly everything that falls under possession, apart from tame animals, has, I think, been named within these seven kinds. Consider: the primary class was rightly placed first, and after that came instrument, vessel, vehicle, defense-work, plaything, and nourisher. Whatever we've left out, if it isn't some major omission, can be fitted into one of these — for instance the class of currency, and seals, and every kind of stamped mark. For these have no great kindred class of their own among themselves, but some are dragged, forcibly yet fittingly enough, into ornament, others into instruments, and they'll fall into place. As for the possession of tame animals apart from slaves, the herding-craft, once divided up, will turn out to have claimed all of that already. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite so. STRANGER: What remains, then, is the class of slaves and of all servants — and among these, I suspect, we'll find the very people who contest the royal art's weave with the king, just as, back with the weavers, we found those concerned with spinning and carding and all the rest we mentioned. All the others, called joint causes, have been used up along with the tasks just described, and have been separated off from royal and statesmanly activity. YOUNG SOCRATES: So it seems. STRANGER: Come, then, let's approach the remaining ones and examine them more closely, so we may know them more securely. YOUNG SOCRATES: We must. STRANGER: The greatest servants, as far as we can see from here, we find to have the opposite character from what we suspected as their occupation and condition. YOUNG SOCRATES: Which ones? STRANGER: Those bought and acquired in that manner — whom we can call slaves without dispute. They are the last people to lay claim to the royal art. YOUNG SOCRATES: How could they?

STRANGER: What then of the free men who willingly place themselves in service to the people just named — carrying and exchanging the products of farming and the other crafts between one another, some in the marketplaces, others trading from city to city by sea and by land, bartering currency for goods and currency for currency itself — the ones we've called money-changers, merchants, ship-owners, and retailers — will they lay any claim to statesmanship? YOUNG SOCRATES: Perhaps to a share of it, the trading kind at least. STRANGER: But surely we won't find hired hands and laborers, whom we see serving everyone most readily for pay, ever laying claim to the royal art. YOUNG SOCRATES: How could they? STRANGER: What about those who perform such services for us on each occasion? YOUNG SOCRATES: Which services, and which people, do you mean? STRANGER: The tribe of heralds, and those who become skilled in writing through frequent service, and various other people terribly clever at working through the business of the magistracies — what shall we call these in turn? YOUNG SOCRATES: Just what you said — servants, not rulers themselves in the cities. STRANGER: Well, I certainly wasn't dreaming when I said that those who most seriously contest statesmanship would turn up somewhere in this direction — though it would seem quite strange indeed to look for them in some servant's role. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite so. STRANGER: Let's press on closer still, toward those we haven't yet tested. There are those concerned with prophecy, who hold some part of a servant's knowledge — for they are regarded as interpreters from the gods to men. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: And further, the priestly class as well, as custom has it, knows how to give gifts from us to the gods through sacrifices in a manner pleasing to them, and to ask from the gods, through prayers, the acquisition of good things for us — both of these being parts, I think, of a servant's art. YOUNG SOCRATES: So it appears. STRANGER: Now at last we seem to be laying hold of something like the track we've been pursuing. The bearing of priests and prophets is filled with great pride, and they win a solemn reputation because of the magnitude of their undertakings — so much so that in Egypt no king may rule without also holding priestly office, and if it happens that someone from another class seizes power by force first, he must afterward be initiated into that priestly class. And among the Greeks too, in many places, one would find the greatest offices assigned the duty of performing the greatest of such sacrifices. And indeed among you here it is especially clear what I mean — for they say that to the man chosen by lot as king here are assigned the most solemn and most ancestral of the old sacrifices. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite so.

STRANGER: These kings chosen by lot, then, together with their priesthood, and their servants, and yet another very large crowd, which has now become clear to us once the earlier groups have been set aside, must be examined. YOUNG SOCRATES: Whom do you mean? STRANGER: A rather strange lot indeed. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so? STRANGER: A thoroughly mixed breed, as it now appears on inspection. Many of these men resemble lions, and centaurs, and other such creatures; and a great many more resemble satyrs, and the weak, shifting kind of beasts. They quickly exchange their shapes and their powers with one another. And now, Socrates, I think I've just recognized who these men are. YOUNG SOCRATES: Tell me, then — you seem to have spotted something strange. STRANGER: Yes — strangeness always comes from ignorance, for everyone. And that's exactly what happened to me just now: I was suddenly at a loss when I caught sight of the chorus concerned with the affairs of cities. YOUNG SOCRATES: Which chorus? STRANGER: The greatest sorcerer of all the sophists, and the most experienced in this art — a man we must strip away from the true statesmen and kings, difficult as that is, if we are to see clearly what we're after. YOUNG SOCRATES: Well, that's certainly not something to let go of. STRANGER: No indeed, not as far as I'm concerned. Now tell me this. YOUNG SOCRATES: What? STRANGER: Isn't rule by a single man one of our forms of political rule? YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: And after monarchy, I suppose one would name rule by the few. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: And isn't a third form of constitution the rule of the multitude, called by the name democracy? YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. STRANGER: And though there are three, don't they in a sense become five, each of the first two giving birth to a further pair of names alongside its own? YOUNG SOCRATES: Which ones? STRANGER: Looking now to force and consent, and to poverty and wealth, and to law and lawlessness arising within them, people split each of the two into a pair and call monarchy, since it presents two forms under two names, tyranny in one case and kingship in the other. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: And the city mastered by the few at any time they call aristocracy and oligarchy. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite so.

STRANGER: As for democracy, whether the multitude rules over those who hold property by force or by consent, and whether it guards the laws strictly or not, in every case no one is accustomed to change its name. YOUNG SOCRATES: True. STRANGER: Well then — do we suppose any of these constitutions could be correct, defined by these boundaries — by one man, by the few, or by the many; by wealth or poverty; by force or consent; with written laws or without them? YOUNG SOCRATES: What's to prevent it? STRANGER: Look more closely, following me this way. YOUNG SOCRATES: Which way? STRANGER: Shall we hold fast to what was said at the very start, or depart from it? YOUNG SOCRATES: What was that? STRANGER: We said, I believe, that the royal rule is one of the sciences. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: And not just any of the sciences, but we selected out from the rest a certain judging and directing kind. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: And from the directing kind, one part concerned with lifeless works, another with living creatures — and dividing things this way, we've kept advancing to this point, never losing sight of the science itself, though we still haven't been able to pin down exactly which one it is. YOUNG SOCRATES: You're right. STRANGER: Do we then grasp this very point — that the defining mark must not be the few or the many, nor the willing or the unwilling, nor poverty or wealth, but some form of knowledge, if we're to follow what's gone before? YOUNG SOCRATES: Well, that's certainly impossible to avoid. STRANGER: So now, of necessity, we must consider in which of these arrangements knowledge concerning the rule of men — the acquisition of what is perhaps the most difficult and greatest of all things — turns out actually to occur. For we must see it clearly, so we may observe which people must be stripped away from the wise king — people who pretend to be statesmen and persuade many, yet are nothing of the sort. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, we must do that, as our argument has already told us. STRANGER: Does it seem possible, then, that the multitude in a city could acquire this science? YOUNG SOCRATES: How could they? STRANGER: But could it be possible in a city of a thousand men for some hundred, or even fifty, to acquire it adequately?

YOUNG SOCRATES: That would make it the easiest of all skills. We know that a thousand men who are top-notch at draughts would never measure up to the true experts found among the rest of the Greeks -- let alone kings. Anyone who possesses the kingly knowledge, whether he actually rules or not, must still be called kingly, by the argument we gave before. STRANGER: Well remembered. And I think it follows that we must look for correct rule in the case of one person, or two, or in general very few, whenever it really is correct. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: And these rulers -- whether they govern willing or unwilling subjects, whether by written law or without it, whether they are rich or poor -- we must reckon them, just as we do now, as ruling by virtue of some skill, whatever it may be. Take doctors: we don't hesitate to call them doctors whether they heal us willingly or against our will, whether by cutting, cauterizing, or inflicting some other pain, whether they follow written rules or not, whether they are poor or rich -- we call them doctors all the same, so long as they exercise authority through their skill, purging or otherwise reducing or building up the body, provided it is for the body's good, making it better instead of worse, and so long as those who treat their patients preserve them. This, I think, and no other standard, is the correct one for medicine and for any other form of rule. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite so. STRANGER: Then it must follow that among constitutions too, this one alone is correct and genuinely a constitution -- the one in which the rulers can be found to possess real knowledge, not merely the appearance of it -- whether they rule by law or without law, over willing or unwilling subjects, whether they are poor or rich; none of this should count for anything, on any correct reckoning. YOUNG SOCRATES: Well put. STRANGER: And whether they purify the city for its good by killing some citizens or banishing them, or make it smaller by sending out colonies somewhere like swarms of bees, or make it larger by bringing in outsiders and turning them into citizens -- so long as they act with knowledge and justice, preserving it and making it better rather than worse to the extent they can, this and this alone, by such standards, must be called the one correct constitution. All the others we speak of must be said to be not genuine, not real constitutions at all, but imitations of this one -- the ones we call well-ordered are imitating it toward what is finer, the others toward what is more shameful. YOUNG SOCRATES: The rest of what you've said, Stranger, seems reasonable enough. But that rulers should govern even without laws -- that was harder to accept.

STRANGER: You've beaten me to the question by a hair, Socrates. I was about to ask you whether you accepted everything, or whether something in what was said troubled you. But now it's clear: we will want to work through this business of the correctness of rulers who govern without laws. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: In a way, obviously, lawmaking belongs to the kingly art. But the best thing is not for the laws to hold power, but for a man who is kingly and possesses practical wisdom to hold it. Do you see why? YOUNG SOCRATES: Why do you say that? STRANGER: Because law could never, by grasping accurately at once what is best and most just for everyone, prescribe the single best course; for the dissimilarities among people and their actions, and the fact that almost nothing in human affairs ever stays still, prevent any skill whatsoever from making any simple pronouncement that holds for everything, for all time. We agree on that, don't we? YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. STRANGER: But we see that law aims at pretty much exactly this simplicity -- like some stubborn, ignorant person who lets nobody do anything contrary to his own ruling, and won't allow anyone even to ask a question, not even if something new turns out to be better for someone, contrary to the rule he himself laid down. YOUNG SOCRATES: True -- that's exactly how the law treats each of us, without exception. STRANGER: So isn't it impossible for something that is always simple to fit well with things that are never simple? YOUNG SOCRATES: It seems likely. STRANGER: Then why on earth is it necessary to make laws at all, since law is not the most correct thing? We must find the reason for this. YOUNG SOCRATES: Indeed. STRANGER: Now, don't you have, among you as in other cities, group training sessions -- for running or something else -- for the sake of competition? YOUNG SOCRATES: Plenty of them, yes. STRANGER: Come, let's recall again from memory the instructions given by skilled trainers in charge of such exercises. YOUNG SOCRATES: What sort of thing? STRANGER: That they don't think it feasible to work in fine detail with each individual, prescribing what suits each particular body; they think they must lay down a somewhat coarser regimen, one that fits the majority of bodies and applies to many people at once. YOUNG SOCRATES: Well put. STRANGER: That's exactly why, assigning equal exertions to them all together, they start them off together and stop them together, in running, wrestling, and every bodily exercise. YOUNG SOCRATES: That's so.

STRANGER: Then let's suppose that the lawgiver too, who must oversee the herds in matters of justice and their mutual dealings, will never be capable of giving, to everyone all together, an exact prescription of what is fitting for each individual. YOUNG SOCRATES: That's likely, at any rate. STRANGER: No -- I think he will lay down the law for the majority, in a rough and general way, for each case, whether he sets it down in writing or leaves it unwritten, legislating according to ancestral custom. YOUNG SOCRATES: Right. STRANGER: Right indeed. For how could anyone ever manage, Socrates, to sit beside each person for his whole life and prescribe with precision what is fitting for him? Since if any one of those who truly possess the kingly knowledge were capable of that, he would hardly go and burden himself, I think, by writing down these so-called laws. YOUNG SOCRATES: At least from what has just been said, Stranger, that follows. STRANGER: And even more so, my good fellow, from what is about to be said. YOUNG SOCRATES: Such as? STRANGER: Something like this. Let's put it to ourselves this way: suppose a doctor, or perhaps a trainer, is about to go abroad and expects to be away from his patients for a good long time. Thinking his instructions might be forgotten by those in training or under treatment, wouldn't he want to write down notes for them? YOUNG SOCRATES: He would. STRANGER: But what if he came back sooner than expected? Wouldn't he dare to prescribe something different from those written notes, if conditions changed for the better for the patients because of winds or some other factor sent by Zeus turning out differently from what was usual -- would he really insist on sticking rigidly to what was laid down long ago, refusing either to prescribe anything else himself or to let the patient dare anything else contrary to what was written, on the grounds that this alone is medically sound and healthy, and anything done otherwise is diseased and unskilled? Wouldn't such a thing, occurring within genuine knowledge and true skill applied to everything, become the biggest joke of all such legislating? YOUNG SOCRATES: Absolutely it would.

STRANGER: And take the man who has written down, in law both written and unwritten, what is just and unjust, noble and shameful, good and bad, for the human herds that graze city by city under the laws of those who wrote them -- if the very lawgiver who wrote with skill, or someone else just like him, should arrive, would he be forbidden from prescribing anything different from this? Wouldn't that prohibition, too, look every bit as ridiculous as the other one, in truth? YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. STRANGER: Do you know what most people say on this point? YOUNG SOCRATES: I can't think of it right now. STRANGER: And it sounds plausible enough. They say that if someone knows of laws better than those handed down by earlier generations, he ought to make law for his own city only after persuading it -- and not otherwise. YOUNG SOCRATES: Well, isn't that right? STRANGER: Perhaps. But suppose someone, instead of persuading, forces through the better course -- tell me, what will we call this kind of force? Not yet, though -- answer first about the earlier case. YOUNG SOCRATES: Which one do you mean? STRANGER: Suppose someone with correct medical skill, without persuading the patient, forces the better treatment on a child, a man, or a woman, contrary to what is written -- what will we call this kind of force? Anything sooner than calling it the diseased error contrary to skill? And isn't it right for the one forced to say anything about what happened to him except that he suffered something diseased and unskillful at the hands of the doctors who forced him? YOUNG SOCRATES: Perfectly true. STRANGER: And what do we call the error that goes against the political skill? Isn't it what's shameful, bad, and unjust? YOUNG SOCRATES: Absolutely. STRANGER: So take those who have been forced to do things contrary to the written and ancestral rules -- things that are actually more just, better, and finer than what came before. Tell me: if we're to avoid being the most laughable people of all, must we not say anything sooner than that those who were forced by the ones who forced them suffered something shameful, unjust, and bad? YOUNG SOCRATES: Perfectly true. STRANGER: But is it really the case that if the one applying force is rich, what was forced is just, while if he's poor, it's unjust? Or rather, whether he persuades or doesn't persuade, whether rich or poor, whether by written law or against it, whether he acts to our advantage or not -- shouldn't the truest standard for the correct management of a city be this: that the wise and good man will manage the affairs of those he rules?

STRANGER: Just as the ship's captain, always watching out for what benefits the vessel and the crew, saves his fellow sailors not by writing rules but by offering his skill as law -- in just this same way, wouldn't a correct constitution arise from those capable of ruling like this, since they offer the strength of their skill as something stronger than the laws? And is there any error at all in whatever these wise rulers do, so long as they safeguard one great thing: always distributing what is most just to the people in the city, using intelligence and skill, and are able thereby to preserve them and to make them better instead of worse, as far as possible? YOUNG SOCRATES: There's no arguing with what's just been said. STRANGER: And indeed there's no arguing with the other point either. YOUNG SOCRATES: Which point was that? STRANGER: That no multitude whatsoever, having acquired this kind of knowledge, could ever be capable of governing a city with intelligence -- rather, we must look for that one correct constitution around some small number, or few, or a single person, and we must treat all the others as imitations, as we said a little earlier -- some imitating it toward what is finer, others toward what is more shameful. YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean by that? I didn't quite grasp the point about imitations just now either. STRANGER: And yet it's no small matter, if someone stirs up this line of thought and then drops it without following it through, without showing the error that now occurs concerning it. YOUNG SOCRATES: What error do you mean? STRANGER: We must look into something not altogether familiar or easy to see. Still, let's try to grasp it. Given that this constitution we've described is the only correct one, you understand that the others must survive by using its written codes -- doing what is now praised, even though it isn't the most correct thing? YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean? STRANGER: That no one in the city should dare to act contrary to the laws, and whoever dares should be punished with death and every extreme penalty. And this is the most correct and finest arrangement, as a second-best, once someone has set aside the first option we just described. Let's work out how this thing we called second-best came to be. Shall we? YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means. STRANGER: Let's go back again to the images we must always use to compare kingly rulers to. YOUNG SOCRATES: What images? STRANGER: The noble ship's captain, and the doctor who is worth many others. Let's examine a certain figure by shaping it out of these very examples. YOUNG SOCRATES: What kind of figure?

STRANGER: Something like this. Suppose we all decided that doctors and sea captains treat us in the most terrible way. Whichever of us either of them wants to save, they save well enough — but whichever they want to injure, they injure, cutting and burning and ordering us to bring them payments as though they were taxes, of which they spend little or nothing on the actual patient, while they and their households enjoy the rest. And in the end, taking money from the patient's relatives or enemies as a fee, they kill him. As for the captains, they do countless other things of the same kind — deliberately abandoning people ashore when they put out to sea, engineering wrecks out on open water and throwing people overboard, and other villainies besides. Suppose, then, that having thought all this through, we resolved to take some action about them: no longer to let either art govern with unchecked authority, whether over slave or free, but to convene an assembly of ourselves — either the whole people or just the wealthy — and let it be open to laymen and to practitioners of other crafts as well to contribute their opinion about seafaring and about diseases, on how we ought to use drugs and medical instruments on patients, and likewise ships themselves and nautical gear for the use of ships, and about the dangers involved — both those from winds and sea that belong to the voyage itself, and those from encounters with pirates, and, should it come to it, sea battles fought with warships against other warships. And whatever the majority decides about these matters, whether on the advice of doctors and captains or of other laymen, let it be written up on tablets and pillars, and let some things be laid down as unwritten ancestral customs — and let all sailing be conducted according to these rules from now to the end of time, and all treatment of the sick as well. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: What you've described is thoroughly absurd. STRANGER: And then, year by year, let officers be appointed from the people, whether from the wealthy or from the whole populace, chosen by lot, whoever draws the lot; and let the officers so appointed govern by the written rules, piloting the ships and healing the sick. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: This is even harder to accept.

STRANGER: Then look at what follows from this. Once each officer's year is up, we'll need to convene courts — made up of men either preselected from the wealthy, or again chosen by lot from the whole populace — and bring the outgoing officers before them to be audited. And let anyone who wishes bring the charge that during his year an officer did not pilot the ships according to the writings, nor according to the ancient customs of our forefathers; and the same for those who treated the sick. And whoever is convicted, let the court assess what penalty they should suffer, or what fine they should pay. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Well, surely anyone who chooses of his own free will to hold office under such conditions deserves whatever penalty or fine he gets, most justly. STRANGER: And beyond all this, we'll still need to pass a law that if anyone is found investigating the truth of piloting and seafaring, or of health and medicine, concerning winds and hot and cold, apart from the written rules, and being clever about such things in any way — first, he must not be called a doctor or a pilot at all, but a stargazer, some babbling sophist. And then, on the ground that he is corrupting others, younger men, and persuading them to take up piloting or medicine unlawfully, setting themselves up as unchecked authorities over ships and the sick, anyone who is entitled to may indict him and bring him before some court; and if he's judged to be persuading people, young or old, contrary to the laws and the written rules, let him be punished with the harshest penalties. For nothing, they'll say, should be wiser than the laws; nobody is ignorant of medicine and health, or of piloting and seafaring, since it's open to anyone who wishes to learn the written rules and the established ancestral customs. Now, Socrates, if this were how things stood — for these sciences, and for generalship too, and for every kind of hunting whatever, and for painting, or any branch of imitative art, and for carpentry, and for the making of every sort of implement, and for farming and the whole art concerned with plants — or if we were to see some art of horse-breeding conducted this way, by the book, or the whole art of herding, or divination, or every part covered by the servant's arts, or board games, or the whole of arithmetic taken purely by itself, whether in plane figures or solids or rates of change — what would all this look like, if it were practiced according to writings and not according to skill? SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Clearly all the arts would be utterly destroyed for us, and could never even come into being again afterward, because of this law forbidding inquiry — so that life, hard enough as it is now, would become entirely unlivable in that future time.

STRANGER: What about this, then? Suppose we forced each of the people mentioned to act according to the writings, and to have the man elected by show of hands, or chosen by lot's chance, oversee our writings — but he, caring nothing for the writings, tried, out of some profit or personal favor, to do something else against them, though he understood nothing — wouldn't this become an even greater evil than the one before? SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Absolutely true. STRANGER: Because, I think, when someone dares to act against laws laid down out of long experience, with advisers who gave their counsel graciously on each point and persuaded the people to adopt them, the transgressor, in producing a mistake many times over the size of the original one, overturns every course of action still more than the writings themselves did. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Of course he does. STRANGER: For this reason, then, for those who lay down laws and writings about anything at all, the second-best course is never, ever to let one person or the multitude do anything at all contrary to these. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Right. STRANGER: So wouldn't these, in each case, be imitations of the truth — things written down, as far as possible, by those who know? SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Of course. STRANGER: And yet we said that the one who knows, the true statesman, if we remember, will do many things by his art in the conduct of his own business, caring nothing for the writings, whenever something else seems to him better than what he himself wrote and prescribed to people who are absent. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Yes, we said that. STRANGER: So then, whatever single man or whatever multitude, bound by established laws, attempts to do anything contrary to them on the grounds that it is better, does the same thing, as far as it can, as that true statesman? SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Quite so. STRANGER: Now if they do this without knowledge, they would be attempting to imitate the true thing, but they'd imitate it very badly; whereas if they have the skill, this is no longer imitation at all, but that truest thing itself? SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Entirely so. STRANGER: And yet we have already agreed, earlier, that no multitude whatsoever is capable of acquiring any art. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Yes, we've agreed to that. STRANGER: So if there really is a kingly art, then the mass of the wealthy and the whole populace could never acquire this political science. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: How could they?

STRANGER: So it seems that such constitutions, if they mean to imitate as well as they can that true constitution — the one ruled by a single person with skill — must never, once their laws are established, do anything contrary to what is written and to ancestral custom. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Beautifully put. STRANGER: So whenever the wealthy imitate this, we call that kind of constitution aristocracy; but whenever they pay no heed to the laws, oligarchy. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: So it seems. STRANGER: And again, whenever one person rules according to laws, imitating the one who has knowledge, we call him king, not distinguishing by name between the one who reigns alone by law with knowledge and the one who reigns by mere opinion. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: It seems so. STRANGER: So then, if someone who truly has knowledge rules alone, he will certainly be given this very same name, king, and nothing else — which is why the five names now given to constitutions have become just one. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: So it appears. STRANGER: But what about when a single ruler acts neither according to laws nor according to customs, but pretends, like the one with knowledge, that the best course must be taken even against what's written, while in fact some desire and ignorance is what's really guiding this imitation — shouldn't we then call each such person a tyrant? SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Of course. STRANGER: This, then, is how tyrant and king have come about, and oligarchy and aristocracy and democracy — because people were disgusted with that single monarch, and refused to believe that anyone could ever become worthy of such rule, someone both willing and able to rule with virtue and knowledge, distributing what is just and holy correctly to everyone — and instead believed he would injure and kill and harm whichever of us he wished, at any moment. Since if such a ruler as we describe did come to be, he would be loved, and would govern happily, steering with precision the one and only correct constitution. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Of course. STRANGER: But as things actually stand, since no king of the sort that arises in beehives is born in our cities — one man distinguished at once in body and in soul — people have to come together and write laws, it seems, chasing after the footprints of the truest constitution. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: So it seems.

STRANGER: Should we be surprised, then, Socrates, at all the evils that occur and will occur in such constitutions, given that this is the foundation laid under them — acting according to writings and customs without knowledge? Anyone who used a different foundation would make it perfectly obvious that everything built on it would collapse. Or should we marvel instead at how strong a city is by nature? For cities have been enduring things like this for an endless span of time, and yet some of them remain stable and are not overturned — though many, to be sure, sink and perish like ships, have already perished, and will go on perishing, because of the wickedness of their captains and crews, people who have taken on the greatest ignorance about the greatest matters — who, understanding nothing whatsoever about politics, believe they have acquired the clearest knowledge of all sciences on every point. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Very true. STRANGER: So then, of these incorrect constitutions, which is least harsh to live under, given that all of them are harsh, and which is the most burdensome? Is this something we ought to examine, even though it's said in passing relative to our present subject? Still, perhaps everything we do is ultimately for the sake of just such a question. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: We must; of course. STRANGER: Then say that the same one, out of the three, turns out to be by far the harshest, and also the easiest. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: What do you mean? STRANGER: Nothing other than this: I mean that rule by one, rule by the few, and rule by the many are the three we named at the outset of the argument now flowing along. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Yes, they were. STRANGER: Then let's cut each of these in two, and make six out of the three, setting the correct one apart from them as a seventh. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: How so? STRANGER: Out of monarchy, kingship and tyranny; out of rule by the few, we said, the well-named one, aristocracy, and oligarchy; and out of rule by the many, what we then called by the single name democracy — but now we must treat this one too as double. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: How so? And on what basis do we divide it? STRANGER: On no different basis than the others, even if its name has always been single so far; still, ruling according to law and ruling contrary to law apply to this one too, as to the others. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: Yes, they do. STRANGER: Now, when we were looking for the correct constitution, this division was of no use, as we showed earlier. But once we set that one apart and laid down the others as necessary alternatives, then, within these, the lawful and the unlawful divide each of them in two. SOCRATES THE YOUNGER: So it appears, now that this argument has been stated. STRANGER: Well then, monarchy yoked to good writings, what we call laws, is the best of all six; but lawless monarchy is harsh, and the hardest of all to live under.

YOUNG SOCRATES: It looks that way. STRANGER: And the rule of the not-many, like the small number that stands midway between one and the multitude, let us set down as a mean between the two extremes in both directions; while the rule of the multitude is in every way weak and capable of nothing very great, whether good or bad, compared with the others, because in it the offices of power are parceled out in small shares among many people. That is why, of all these constitutions when they are lawful, it is the worst, but when all of them are lawless, it is the best; and if all are undisciplined, life in a democracy wins out, but if all are orderly, it is the least livable of the three, while under the first kind of rule life is by far the best and finest, except for the seventh; for that one must be set apart from all the others, like a god set apart from men. YOUNG SOCRATES: It certainly appears that things fall out this way, and we should proceed just as you say. STRANGER: Then must we not also strip away from all these constitutions, except the one grounded in knowledge, the people who share in them, on the ground that they are not statesmen at all but faction-mongers, and that being champions of the greatest phantom-images, they are themselves phantoms of the same kind, and being the greatest imitators and enchanters, they turn out to be the greatest sophists among sophists? YOUNG SOCRATES: It looks as though the term has, quite rightly, come round full circle onto the very people who are called statesmen. STRANGER: Well then. This part of our business, as we said just now, appears to be like a drama—a troupe of Centaurs and Satyrs, so to speak—which had to be separated out from the art of statesmanship, and now, with great difficulty, it has been separated. YOUNG SOCRATES: So it appears. STRANGER: But there remains another part, still more difficult, because it is more akin to and more closely bound up with the kingly kind, and harder to make out clearly; and it seems to me we are in much the same position as those who refine gold. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so? STRANGER: Those craftsmen first separate out earth and stones and a good many other foreign things; and after that there remain, mixed in together, the precious things akin to gold, which can only be removed by fire—copper and silver, and sometimes even adamant—which, hardly separated out by testing in the smelting, at last let us see the so-called pure gold all by itself, alone. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, that is indeed said to be how it happens.

STRANGER: By the same reasoning, then, it seems that now too the other things—all that is foreign and unrelated to the science of statesmanship—have been separated off from it, and what remains are the precious and kindred things. Among these, I think, are generalship, the administration of justice, and whatever rhetoric shares in kingship by persuading toward justice and helps steer the business of cities. By what method could one most easily set these apart and show, naked and alone, that very thing we have been searching for? YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly we must try to do exactly that. STRANGER: For the sake of the attempt, then, it will come into view; but we must try to reveal it by way of music. Now tell me. YOUNG SOCRATES: What? STRANGER: There is, I take it, some branch of learning we call music, and in general among the sciences having to do with craftsmanship? YOUNG SOCRATES: There is. STRANGER: Well then—as to whether we ought to learn any one of these or not, shall we say this too is itself some science concerned with just that question, or how? YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, we shall say it is. STRANGER: And shall we agree that this science is different from those others? YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: And is it right that none of them should rule any other, or that those others should rule this one, or that this one, exercising oversight, should rule all the rest? YOUNG SOCRATES: This one should rule those others. STRANGER: So you declare that the science which decides whether we ought to learn something or not must rule over the science that is learned and that teaches? YOUNG SOCRATES: Absolutely. STRANGER: And likewise the science that decides whether one ought to persuade or not must rule over the science capable of persuading? YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: Well then—to which science shall we assign the power of persuasion over the mass and the crowd, exercised through storytelling rather than through teaching? YOUNG SOCRATES: That, I think, is clearly to be given to rhetoric. STRANGER: And whether one ought to act toward certain people through persuasion or through some kind of force, or to keep entirely still—to which science shall we assign this in turn? YOUNG SOCRATES: To the science that rules over the arts of persuasion and speech. STRANGER: And that would be none other, I think, than the power of the statesman. YOUNG SOCRATES: Very well put. STRANGER: And this too seems to have been quickly separated from statesmanship—rhetoric, as a distinct kind, though it serves statesmanship. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: And what are we to think about this other power in turn? YOUNG SOCRATES: Which one? STRANGER: The power that decides how one ought to wage war against whatever enemies we have chosen to fight—shall we call this itself an art or not? YOUNG SOCRATES: How could we think it lacks art, when generalship and the whole practice of war carry it out? STRANGER: And the science able to deliberate about whether one ought to go to war, or come to terms through friendship—shall we take this to be different from that one, or the same? YOUNG SOCRATES: Given what we have already accepted, it must be different.

STRANGER: Then shall we declare that this one rules over the other, if indeed we are to hold consistently to what we accepted before? YOUNG SOCRATES: I agree. STRANGER: Then whom shall we ever attempt to declare the master of this whole formidable and mighty art of war, except the one who is truly kingly? YOUNG SOCRATES: No one else. STRANGER: So we shall not set down the science of generals as statesmanship, since it is merely a servant. YOUNG SOCRATES: That seems unlikely. STRANGER: Come then, let us also examine the power of judges who judge rightly. YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means. STRANGER: Does it, then, have any greater power than this—taking over, with respect to contracts, all the lawful rules laid down by a lawgiver-king, and judging by looking to these what has been ordained as just and unjust, contributing its own particular virtue of never being swayed by bribes, fears, pity, or any other enmity or friendship, so as to be willing to decide people's mutual charges against each other contrary to the lawgiver's ordinance? YOUNG SOCRATES: No, pretty much what you have said is the whole work of this power. STRANGER: Then we find the strength of judges to be, not kingly rule, but the guardian and servant of the laws. YOUNG SOCRATES: So it seems. STRANGER: This much we must grasp, looking over all the sciences we have named together: none of them has turned out to be statesmanship. For the one that is truly kingly ought not to act itself, but to rule over those capable of acting, knowing the right beginning and impulse for the most important matters in cities as to timeliness and untimeliness, while the others carry out what is assigned to them. YOUNG SOCRATES: Rightly said. STRANGER: For this reason, then, the sciences we have just gone through, ruling neither one another nor themselves, but each concerned with some private business of its own, have rightly taken a name proper to the particular nature of its own business. YOUNG SOCRATES: So it seems, at any rate. STRANGER: But the science that rules over all of these, and over the laws, and cares for everything in the city, weaving all of it together most rightly—if we grasp its power under a name that comprehends the whole, we should most justly, it seems, call it statesmanship. YOUNG SOCRATES: Absolutely. STRANGER: Then, following the model of the art of weaving, shall we now wish to go through it in full, now that all the kinds within the city have become clear to us? YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, very much so.

STRANGER: We must, then, describe what the kingly weaving together is, and in what manner, by weaving, it renders us the fabric we are after. YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly. STRANGER: It has, as it turns out, become a necessary business to demonstrate a difficult matter. YOUNG SOCRATES: Still, it must be said, at all costs. STRANGER: The reason is that a part of virtue is, in a certain way, different in kind from another part of virtue—a claim quite easy for verbal disputants to seize on and use against the opinions of the many. YOUNG SOCRATES: I don't follow. STRANGER: Let me try again, this way. You consider courage, I take it, to be one part of virtue for us. YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. STRANGER: And moderation, again, to be different from courage, yet also one part, just as courage is. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: Now here is a strange claim about these two that we must dare to put forward. YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it? STRANGER: That in a certain way they stand toward each other in downright hostility and opposed factions in a great many existing things. YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean? STRANGER: A claim quite out of the ordinary; for surely all the parts of virtue are said to be friendly to one another. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: Then let us look carefully and attentively at whether this is really so simple, or whether, more than anything, there is some difference among them toward their own kin. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, tell me how we should examine it. STRANGER: We must look among all the things we call beautiful generally, and that we place into two opposite kinds. YOUNG SOCRATES: Say it more clearly still. STRANGER: Sharpness and speed, whether in bodies or in souls or in the movement of the voice, whether in these things themselves or in images of them—all that music imitates and produces, and painting too—have you ever been a person to praise any of these, or been present when someone else praised them? YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: And do you remember the manner in which people do this, in each of these cases? YOUNG SOCRATES: Not at all. STRANGER: Could I manage, then, as I intend, to show you this in words? YOUNG SOCRATES: Why not? STRANGER: You seem to think such a thing easy. Well, let us examine it among the opposite kinds. For in many actions, and often on each occasion, when we admire speed and vehemence and sharpness of thought and of body, and also of voice, we speak in praise of it using one single term, that of courage. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so? STRANGER: We say first, I think, 'a sharp and courageous thing,' and 'a quick and manly thing,' and 'a vehement thing' likewise; and by applying everywhere the name I mean, common to all these natures, we praise them. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: But what of this? Have we not often praised, in turn, the kind that comes from a calm nature, in many of our actions? YOUNG SOCRATES: Very much so. STRANGER: And in saying this about those calm things, are we not speaking the opposite of what we said about the others? YOUNG SOCRATES: How so? STRANGER: We say, I think, on each occasion, that such things are quiet and moderate, admiring what is done with respect to thought, and, again, that actions are slow and gentle, and further that things occurring with respect to the voice are smooth and deep, and that all rhythmic movement and the whole art of music that makes proper use of slowness at the right moment—to all these together we apply not the name of courage but that of orderliness. YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true. STRANGER: And yet whenever both of these turn out to be untimely for us, we change our judgment and blame each of them, assigning the names once again in the opposite direction. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so? STRANGER: We call things that turn out sharper than the occasion requires, and quicker, and appear harder, insolent and mad; while things that are heavier and slower and softer we call cowardly and sluggish. And pretty much, as a rule, we find that these qualities—the moderate nature and courage—having been allotted, so to speak, a warring and opposed camp, are not mixed with each other in actions of this sort; and further, if we pursue the matter, we shall see that those who possess these traits in their own souls are at odds with one another. YOUNG SOCRATES: Where do you mean? STRANGER: In all the cases we have just mentioned, and probably in many others as well. For, I think, because of their own kinship with each type, people praise the one set of qualities as belonging to themselves, and blame the qualities of the opposite type as foreign, and so they fall into a great deal of hostility with one another over a great many things. YOUNG SOCRATES: That does seem likely. STRANGER: Now this difference between these two kinds is, in fact, a kind of game; but concerning the greatest matters, it turns out to be the most hateful disease of all for cities. YOUNG SOCRATES: What matters do you mean? STRANGER: The whole arrangement of life, as is likely. For those who are exceptionally orderly are always ready to live a quiet life, managing their own affairs by themselves alone, and dealing with everyone at home in this same way, and likewise ready, toward foreign cities, to keep the peace in every possible manner; and because of this desire of theirs, more untimely than it ought to be, whenever they get to do what they want, without noticing it they become unwarlike themselves, and raise the young in the same way, and are forever at the mercy of those who attack them, so that within not many years they themselves, and their children, and the whole city together, often become slaves instead of free people without even noticing it.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That's a harsh and terrible condition you're describing. STRANGER: And what about those who lean more toward courage? Don't they, because their desire for that kind of life burns hotter than it should, constantly drive their own cities into some war, and end up either destroying them outright or reducing them to slavery and subjection under stronger enemies? YOUNG SOCRATES: That happens too. STRANGER: So how can we avoid saying that both these types are always at the greatest odds and division with each other in these matters? YOUNG SOCRATES: There's no way we can avoid saying it. STRANGER: Then haven't we found exactly what we set out to investigate at the start -- that the parts of virtue are naturally at no small variance with one another, and that this same thing holds true of the people who possess them? YOUNG SOCRATES: It does seem so. STRANGER: Let's take up this point next. YOUNG SOCRATES: Which one? STRANGER: Whether any of the combinatory sciences would ever willingly put together any product of its own work, even the humblest, out of both worthless and good materials -- or whether every science everywhere throws out the worthless as much as it can and takes only the fit and useful materials, and from these -- whether alike or unlike -- gathers them all into one and produces a single power and form. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: Then neither will the true natural art of statesmanship ever willingly build any city out of good and bad people. It's obvious that it will first test them through play, and after the testing, hand them over to those capable of instructing and serving toward this very purpose, itself directing and overseeing -- just as weaving directs and oversees the carders and all the others who prepare whatever is needed for its weaving, indicating to each what work to produce as suitable for its own interlacing. YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: This same thing, it seems to me, is done by the kingly art in relation to all the teachers and nurturers who work under law -- holding as it does the very power of oversight, it will not allow anyone to practice any training except what produces a character suited to its own blend, and it directs them to teach only these things. As for those unable to share in a courageous and disciplined character, and whatever else tends toward virtue, but who are instead thrust by a wicked nature's force into godlessness, arrogance, and injustice, it casts them out by death, exile, and the harshest penalties of disgrace. YOUNG SOCRATES: That is more or less how it's said to be. STRANGER: And those wallowing in great ignorance and abasement it yokes into the class of slaves. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite right. STRANGER: As for the rest -- those whose natures are capable, given the right education, of rising to nobility and of accepting a mixture with one another through art -- of these, the ones inclining more toward courage, regarding their firm character as, so to speak, the warp thread, and the ones inclining toward moderation, using -- to keep the image -- a rich, soft weft-thread, since these two incline in opposite directions to each other, it attempts to bind and interweave them in something like the following way. YOUNG SOCRATES: What way is that? STRANGER: First, by joining together, through a divine bond, that part of their souls which is akin to the eternal, and after the divine part, their animal nature in turn through human bonds. YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean by that now? STRANGER: I mean that true opinion about what is fine, just, and good, and their opposites, held with firm conviction, whenever it arises in souls, I call divine, arising as it does in a more-than-human kind. YOUNG SOCRATES: That's certainly fitting. STRANGER: Then we know that it belongs only to the statesman and the good lawgiver to be capable of instilling this very thing, through the kingly Muse, in those who have rightly received the education we were just discussing. YOUNG SOCRATES: That's likely enough. STRANGER: And whoever, Socrates, is unable to accomplish this, let us never call him by the names we are now seeking. YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite right. STRANGER: Well then -- doesn't a courageous soul, when it takes hold of this kind of truth, grow gentle and become most willing to share in just dealings, while without receiving it, it inclines instead toward a kind of savage nature? YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: And what of the disciplined nature? Doesn't it, once it partakes of these convictions, become truly moderate and wise, at least as far as fits within a community, while if it fails to share in what we're discussing, it most justly earns a reputation for a rather pitiable simplicity? YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite so. STRANGER: So shall we say that this interweaving and bond never becomes lasting between bad people toward each other, or between good people toward bad ones, and that no science would ever seriously apply itself to such people? YOUNG SOCRATES: How could it?

STRANGER: But among those who are well-born from the start and reared according to nature, this bond alone can be implanted through laws, and for these people this is indeed the art's remedy -- and, as we said, this bond of the parts of virtue, belonging to natures unlike each other and pulling in opposite directions, is the more divine one. YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true. STRANGER: As for the remaining bonds, being merely human ones, once this divine bond exists, it's not at all hard to conceive of them, or having conceived them, to carry them out. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so, and what are they? STRANGER: Those concerning intermarriages, the sharing of children, and private matters of betrothal and marriage. Most people bind themselves in these matters incorrectly when it comes to producing children. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so? STRANGER: As for the pursuit of wealth and power in such matters -- who would take the trouble to find fault with that as if it were worth discussing? YOUNG SOCRATES: No one would. STRANGER: It's more fitting to speak instead about those who take care over lineage, and whether they're doing anything improper in this regard. YOUNG SOCRATES: That does seem reasonable. STRANGER: Well, they act on no sound principle at all, chasing after the ease of the moment, and by embracing those similar to themselves while disliking those unlike them, they give the greatest weight to mere distaste. YOUNG SOCRATES: How do you mean? STRANGER: The disciplined types seek out their own kind of character, and as far as they can, marry from among such people, and send out their own daughters in marriage to such people in return. The courageous class does exactly the same, pursuing its own nature -- when in fact both classes ought to do the complete opposite. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so, and why? STRANGER: Because courage, when bred across many generations unmixed with a moderate nature, is naturally vigorous with strength at first, but in the end blossoms out into sheer madness. YOUNG SOCRATES: Likely enough. STRANGER: And a soul, on the other hand, too full of restraint and unmixed with bold courage, bred this way across many generations, tends to grow more sluggish than is fitting, and in the end becomes entirely crippled. YOUNG SOCRATES: And that too is likely to turn out that way.

STRANGER: So I said it was no hard matter to bind these bonds together, once both classes come to hold one and the same opinion about what is fine and good. For this is the one whole task of the kingly weaving -- never to allow the moderate characters to be separated from the courageous ones, but to weave them together by shared opinions, honors, dishonors, reputations, and by the exchange of pledges between them, drawing from them a smooth and, as it's called, well-woven fabric, and always entrusting the offices of government in the cities jointly to these people together. YOUNG SOCRATES: How so? STRANGER: Wherever there is need for a single ruler, choosing as overseer someone who holds both qualities; and wherever there is need for several rulers, mixing together a portion of each type. For the characters of moderate rulers are exceedingly cautious, just, and safety-preserving, but they lack a certain sharpness and quick, effective boldness. YOUNG SOCRATES: That does seem to be the case. STRANGER: And the courageous characters, in turn, fall short of those others in justice and caution, but possess boldness in action to an outstanding degree. And it's impossible for everything concerning cities, in private and public life, to go well unless both these qualities are present together. YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course. STRANGER: This, then, let us say, is the very completion of the fabric of political action, woven straight through: the character of courageous and moderate people, whenever the kingly art draws their life together into a shared harmony and friendship, having produced the most magnificent and best of all fabrics, so that it clothes in common everyone else in the cities, slave and free alike, holds them together with this weave, and rules and oversees the city, leaving out nothing needed for it to become as happy as a city can possibly be. YOUNG SOCRATES: You have once again brought the kingly man and the statesman to a most beautiful completion for us, Stranger.

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