YOUNG SOCRATES: So how do you say we made a mistake, and how great was it?
VISITOR: In one way it was lesser, in another it was very high-minded, and much greater and more extensive than in the other case.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How so?
VISITOR: In that when asked for the king and statesman from the period of the present mode of rotation and generation we replied with the shepherd [275] from the opposite period, who cared for the human herd that existed then, and at that a god instead of a mortal—in that way we went very greatly astray. But in that we revealed him as ruling over the whole city together, without specifying in what manner he does so, in this way, by contrast, what we said was true, but incomplete and unclear, which is why our mistake was lesser than in the respect just mentioned.
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
VISITOR: So we should define the manner of his rule over the city; it’s in this way that we should expect our discussion of the statesman to reach its completion.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Right.
VISITOR: It was just for these reasons that we introduced our story, in [b] order that it might demonstrate, in relation to herd-rearing, not only that as things now stand everyone disputes this function with the person we are looking for, but also in order that we might see more plainly that other person himself whom alone, in accordance with the example of shepherds and cowherds, because he has charge of human rearing, it is appropriate to think worthy of this name, and this name alone.36
YOUNG SOCRATES: Correct.
VISITOR: But in my view, Socrates, this figure of the divine herdsman is [c] still greater than that of a king, and the statesmen who belong to our present era are much more like their subjects in their natures and have shared in an education and nurture closer to theirs.
YOUNG SOCRATES: I suppose you must be right.
VISITOR: Yet they will be neither less nor more worth looking for, whether their natures are of the latter or of the former sort.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite.
VISITOR: Then let’s go back by the following route. The sort of expertise we said was ‘self-directing’ in the case of living creatures, but which took its care of them not as individuals but in groups, and which we then went [d] on immediately to call herd-rearing—you remember?37
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
VISITOR: Well, in a way we missed in our aim at this expertise; for we did not at all succeed in grasping the statesman along with the rest or name him, but he eluded us in our naming, and we did not notice.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How so?
VISITOR: All the other sorts of herdsmen, I think, share the feature of rearing their several herds, but although the statesman does not we still applied the name to him, when we should have applied to all of them [e] one of the names that belongs in common to them.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What you say is true, if indeed there is such a name.
VISITOR: And how would—perhaps—‘looking after’ not have been common to them all, without any specification of it as ‘rearing’, or any other sort of activity? By calling it some sort of expertise in ‘herd-keeping’ or ‘looking after’, or ‘caring for’, as applying to them all, we could have covered the statesman too as well as the rest, given that this was the requirement our argument indicated.
[276] YOUNG SOCRATES: Correct. But in what way would the division following this be made?
VISITOR: In the same way as we previously divided herd-rearing by footed and wingless, and non-interbreeding and hornless—by dividing herd-keeping too by these same things, I think, we would have included in our account to the same degree both the present sort of kingship and that in the time of Cronus.
YOUNG SOCRATES: It seems so; but again I ask what step follows this.
[b] VISITOR: It’s clear that if we had used the name ‘herd-keeping’ like this, no one would ever have contended with us on the grounds that there is no such thing as caring at all, in the way that it was then justly contended that there was no sort of expertise available that deserved this appellation of ‘rearing’, but that if there really were such a thing, many people had a prior and better claim to it than any of our kings.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Correct.
VISITOR: But care of the whole human community together—no other sort of expertise would be prepared to say that it had a better [c] and prior claim to being that than kingly rule, which is over all human beings.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What you say is correct.
VISITOR: But after that, Socrates, do we see that at the very end of our account we again made a large mistake?
YOUNG SOCRATES: What sort of mistake?
VISITOR: It was this, that even if we had been quite convinced that there was some expertise concerned with the rearing of the two-footed herd, we should certainly not for that reason immediately have called it the expertise of the king and statesman, as if that were the end of the matter.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What should we have done?
VISITOR: First of all, as we are saying, we should have altered the name, [d] aligning it more with caring for things than with rearing, and then we should have cut this; for it would still offer room for cuts of no small size.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Where would they be?
VISITOR: I imagine, where we would have divided off the divine herdsman, on one side, and the human carer on the other.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Correct.
VISITOR: But again we ought to have cut into two the art of the carer resulting from this apportionment.
YOUNG SOCRATES: By using what distinction?
VISITOR: That between the enforced and the voluntary.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Why so?
[e] VISITOR: I think we made a mistake before in this way too, by behaving more simple-mindedly than we should have. We put king and tyrant into the same category, when both they themselves and the manner of their rule are very unlike one another.
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
VISITOR: But now should we set things to rights again, and, as I said, should we divide the expertise of the human carer into two, by using the categories of the enforced and the voluntary?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Absolutely.
VISITOR: And should we perhaps call tyrannical the expertise that relates to subjects who are forced, and the herd-keeping that is voluntary and relates to willing two-footed living things that expertise which belongs to statesmanship, displaying, in his turn, the person who has this expertise and cares for his subjects in this way as being genuinely king and statesman?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, visitor, and it’s likely that in this way our exposition [277] concerning the statesman would reach completion.
VISITOR: It would be a fine thing for us, Socrates. But this mustn’t be just your view alone; I too have got to share it in common with you. And as it is, according to my view our discussion does not yet seem to have given a complete shape to the king. Just as sculptors sometimes hurry when it is not appropriate to do so and actually lose time by making additions and increasing the size of the various parts of their work38 beyond [b] what is necessary, so too in our case—I suppose that in order to give a grand as well as a quick demonstration of the mistake in the route we previously took, we thought it was appropriate to the king to give large-scale illustrations. We took upon ourselves an astonishing mass of material in the story we told, so forcing ourselves to use a greater part of it than necessary; thus we have made our exposition longer, and have in every way failed to apply a finish to our story, and our account, just like a portrait, seems adequate in its superficial outline, but not yet to have [c] received its proper clarity, as it were with paints and the mixing together of colors. But it is not painting or any other sort of manual craft, but speech and discourse, that constitute the more fitting medium for exhibiting all living things, for those who are able to follow; for the rest, it will be through manual crafts.
YOUNG SOCRATES: That much is correct; but show me how you say we have not yet given an adequate account.
VISITOR: It’s a hard
thing, my fine friend, to demonstrate any of the more [d] important subjects without using models. It looks as if each of us knows everything in a kind of dreamlike way, and then again is ignorant of everything when as it were awake.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?
VISITOR: I do seem rather oddly now to have stirred up the subject of what happens to us in relation to knowledge.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How so?
VISITOR: It has turned out, my dear fellow, that the idea of a ‘model’ itself in its turn also has need of a model to demonstrate it.
[e] YOUNG SOCRATES: How so? Explain, and don’t hold back for my sake.
VISITOR: Explain I must, in view of your own readiness to follow. I suppose we recognize that when children are just acquiring skill in reading and writing—
YOUNG SOCRATES: Recognize what?
VISITOR: That they distinguish each of the individual letters well enough in the shortest and easiest syllables, and come to be capable of indicating what is true in relation to them.
[278] YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course.
VISITOR: But then once again they make mistakes about these very same letters in other syllables, and think and say what is false.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Absolutely.
VISITOR: Well then, isn’t this the easiest and best way of leading them on to the things they’re not yet recognizing?
YOUNG SOCRATES: What way?
VISITOR: To take them first back to those cases in which they were getting these same things right, and having done that, to put these beside what [b] they’re not yet recognizing. By comparing them, we demonstrate that there is the same kind of thing with similar features in both combinations, until the things that they are getting right have been shown set beside all the ones that they don’t know; once the things in question have been shown like this, and so become models, they bring it about that each of all the individual letters is called both different, on the basis that it is different [c] from the others, and the same, on the basis that it is always the same as and identical to itself, in all syllables.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Absolutely right.
VISITOR: Well then, have we grasped this point adequately, that we come to be using a model when a given thing, which is the same in something different and distinct, is correctly identified there, and having been brought together with the original thing, brings about a single true judgment about each separately and both together?39
YOUNG SOCRATES: It seems so.
VISITOR: Then would we be surprised if our minds by their nature experienced [d] this same thing in relation to the individual ‘letters’ of everything, now, in some cases, holding a settled view with the aid of truth in relation to each separate thing, now, in others, being all at sea in relation to all of them—somehow or other getting the constituents of the combinations themselves right, but once again not knowing these same things when they are transferred into the long ‘syllables’ of things and the ones that are not easy?
YOUNG SOCRATES: There would be absolutely nothing surprising in it.
[e] VISITOR: Right, my friend: how could anyone begin from false belief and get to even a small part of the truth, and so acquire wisdom?
YOUNG SOCRATES: I dare say it’s impossible.
VISITOR: Well, if that’s the way it is, the two of us would not at all be in the wrong in having first attempted to see the nature of models as a whole in the specific case of a further insignificant model, with the intention then of bringing to the case of the king, which is of the greatest importance, something of the same form from less significant things somewhere, in an attempt once more through the use of a model to recognize in an expert, systematic way what looking after people in the city is, so that it may be present to us in our waking state instead of in a dream?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Absolutely right.
VISITOR: Then we must take up once again what we were saying before,40 [279] to the effect that since tens of thousands of people dispute the role of caring for cities with the kingly class, what we have to do is to separate all these off and leave the king on his own; and it was just for this purpose that we said we needed a model.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very much so.
VISITOR: So what model, involving the same activities as statesmanship, on a very small scale, could one compare with it, and so discover in a satisfactory way what we are looking for? By Zeus, Socrates, what do you [b] think? If there isn’t anything else to hand, well, what about weaving? Do you want us to choose that? Not all of it, if you agree, since perhaps the weaving of cloth from wool will suffice; maybe it is this part of it, if we choose it, which would provide the testimony we want.
Complete Works Page 51
