YOUNG SOCRATES: What was the error of which, rated off Lydians or Phrygians, or any other tribe, as you say, we were guilty in our recent division?
and arrayed them against the rest of the world, when you could no longer make a division into parts which STRANGER: The error was just as if some one who were also classes.
wanted to divide the human race, were to divide them after the fashion which prevails in this part of YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true; but I wish that the world; here they cut off the Hellenes as one this distinction between a part and a class could species, and all the other species of mankind, which still be made somewhat plainer.
are innumerable, and have no ties or common language, they include under the single name of ‘bar-STRANGER: O Socrates, best of men, you are im-barians,’ and because they have one name they are posing upon me a very difficult task. We have al-supposed to be of one species also. Or suppose that ready digressed further from our original intention in dividing numbers you were to cut off ten thou-than we ought, and you would have us wander still sand from all the rest, and make of it one species, further away. But we must now return to our sub-comprehending the rest under another separate ject; and hereafter, when there is a leisure hour, we name, you might say that here too was a single class, will follow up the other track; at the same time, I because you had given it a single name. Whereas wish you to guard against imagining that you ever you would make a much better and more equal and heard me declare—
logical classification of numbers, if you divided them into odd and even; or of the human species, if you YOUNG SOCRATES: What?
divided them into male and female; and only sepa-59
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STRANGER: That a class and a part are distinct.
being one, and all brutes making up the other.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What did I hear, then?
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
STRANGER: That a class is necessarily a part, but STRANGER: I thought that in taking away a part, there is no similar necessity that a part should be a you imagined that the remainder formed a class, class; that is the view which I should always wish because you were able to call them by the common you to attribute to me, Socrates.
name of brutes.
YOUNG SOCRATES: So be it.
YOUNG SOCRATES: That again is true.
STRANGER: There is another thing which I should STRANGER: Suppose now, O most courageous of like to know.
dialecticians, that some wise and understanding creature, such as a crane is reputed to be, were, in YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?
imitation of you, to make a similar division, and set up cranes against all other animals to their own STRANGER: The point at which we digressed; for, special glorification, at the same time jumbling to-if I am not mistaken, the exact place was at the gether all the others, including man, under the ap-question, Where you would divide the management pellation of brutes,—here would be the sort of er-of herds. To this you appeared rather too ready to ror which we must try to avoid.
answer that there were two species of animals; man 60
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YOUNG SOCRATES: How can we be safe?
STRANGER: In that case, there was already implied a division of all animals into tame and wild; STRANGER: If we do not divide the whole class of those whose nature can be tamed are called tame, animals, we shall be less likely to fall into that er-and those which cannot be tamed are called wild.
ror.
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
YOUNG SOCRATES: We had better not take the whole?
STRANGER: And the political science of which we are in search, is and ever was concerned with tame STRANGER: Yes, there lay the source of error in animals, and is also confined to gregarious animals.
our former division.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How?
STRANGER: But then we ought not to divide, as STRANGER: You remember how that part of the we did, taking the whole class at once. Neither let art of knowledge which was concerned with com-us be in too great haste to arrive quickly at the po-mand, had to do with the rearing of living crea-litical science; for this mistake has already brought tures,—I mean, with animals in herds?
upon us the misfortune of which the proverb speaks.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What misfortune?