Part 8 (2/2)
YOUNG SOCRATES: What was it?
STRANGER: Why, supposing we were ever so sure that there is such an art as the art of rearing or feeding bipeds, there was no reason why we should call this the royal or political art, as though there were no more to be said.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.
STRANGER: Our first duty, as we were saying, was to remodel the name, so as to have the notion of care rather than of feeding, and then to divide, for there may be still considerable divisions.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How can they be made?
STRANGER: First, by separating the divine shepherd from the human guardian or manager.
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
STRANGER: And the art of management which is a.s.signed to man would again have to be subdivided.
YOUNG SOCRATES: On what principle?
STRANGER: On the principle of voluntary and compulsory.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Why?
STRANGER: Because, if I am not mistaken, there has been an error here; for our simplicity led us to rank king and tyrant together, whereas they are utterly distinct, like their modes of government.
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
STRANGER: Then, now, as I said, let us make the correction and divide human care into two parts, on the principle of voluntary and compulsory.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.
STRANGER: And if we call the management of violent rulers tyranny, and the voluntary management of herds of voluntary bipeds politics, may we not further a.s.sert that he who has this latter art of management is the true king and statesman?
YOUNG SOCRATES: I think, Stranger, that we have now completed the account of the Statesman.
STRANGER: Would that we had, Socrates, but I have to satisfy myself as well as you; and in my judgment the figure of the king is not yet perfected; like statuaries who, in their too great haste, having overdone the several parts of their work, lose time in cutting them down, so too we, partly out of haste, partly out of a magnanimous desire to expose our former error, and also because we imagined that a king required grand ill.u.s.trations, have taken up a marvellous lump of fable, and have been obliged to use more than was necessary. This made us discourse at large, and, nevertheless, the story never came to an end.
And our discussion might be compared to a picture of some living being which had been fairly drawn in outline, but had not yet attained the life and clearness which is given by the blending of colours. Now to intelligent persons a living being had better be delineated by language and discourse than by any painting or work of art: to the duller sort by works of art.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true; but what is the imperfection which still remains? I wish that you would tell me.
STRANGER: The higher ideas, my dear friend, can hardly be set forth except through the medium of examples; every man seems to know all things in a dreamy sort of way, and then again to wake up and to know nothing.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?
STRANGER: I fear that I have been unfortunate in raising a question about our experience of knowledge.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Why so?
STRANGER: Why, because my 'example' requires the a.s.sistance of another example.
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