Young Socrates: How would you divide them?
Stranger: Of the whole class, some have life and some are without life.
Young Socrates: True.
Stranger: And by the help of this distinction we may make, if we please, a subdivision of the section of knowledge which commands.
Young Socrates: At what point?
Stranger: One part may be set over the production of lifeless, the other of living objects; and in this way the whole will be divided.
Young Socrates: Certainly.
Stranger: That division, then, is complete; and now we may leave one half, and take up the other; which may also be divided into two.
Young Socrates: Which of the two halves do you mean?
Stranger: Of course that which exercises command about animals. For, surely, the royal science is not like that of a master-workman, a science presiding over lifeless objects;—the king has a nobler function, which is the management and control of living beings.
Young Socrates: True.
Stranger: And the breeding and tending of living beings may be observed to be sometimes a tending of the individual; in other cases, a common care of creatures in flocks?
Young Socrates: True.
Stranger: But the statesman is not a tender of individuals—not like the driver or groom of a single ox or horse; he is rather to be compared with the keeper of a drove of horses or oxen.
Young Socrates: Yes, I see, thanks to you.
Stranger: Shall we call this art of tending many animals together, the art of managing a herd, or the art of collective management?
Young Socrates: No matter;—whichever suggests itself to us in the course of conversation.
Stranger: Very good, Socrates; and, if you continue to be not too particular about names, you will be all the richer in wisdom when you are an old man. And now, as you say, leaving the discussion of the name—can you see a way in which a person, by showing the art of herding to be of two kinds, may cause that which is now sought amongst twice the number of things, to be then sought amongst half that number?
Young Socrates: I will try;—there appears to me to be one management of men and another of beasts.
Stranger: You have certainly divided them in a most straightforward and manly style; but you have fallen into an error which hereafter I think that we had better avoid.
Young Socrates: What is the error?
Stranger: I think that we had better not cut off a single small portion which is not a species, from many larger portions; the part should be a species. To separate off at once the subject of investigation, is a most excellent plan, if only the separation be rightly made; and you were under the impression that you were right, because you saw that you would come to man; and this led you to hasten the steps. But you should not chip off too small a piece, my friend; the safer way is to cut through the middle; which is also the more likely way of finding classes. Attention to this principle makes all the difference in a process of enquiry.
Young Socrates: What do you mean, Stranger?
Stranger: I will endeavour to speak more plainly out of love to your good parts, Socrates; and, although I cannot at present entirely explain myself, I will try, as we proceed, to make my meaning a little clearer.
Young Socrates: What was the error of which, as you say, we were guilty in our recent division?