Statesman | Page 6

Very good, but you are in
too great a hurry to get to man. All divisions which are rightly made
should cut through the middle; if you attend to this rule, you will be
more likely to arrive at classes. 'I do not understand the nature of my
mistake.' Your division was like a division of the human race into
Hellenes and Barbarians, or into Lydians or Phrygians and all other
nations, instead of into male and female; or like a division of number
into ten thousand and all other numbers, instead of into odd and even.
And I should like you to observe further, that though I maintain a class
to be a part, there is no similar necessity for a part to be a class. But to
return to your division, you spoke of men and other animals as two
classes--the second of which you comprehended under the general
name of beasts. This is the sort of division which an intelligent crane
would make: he would put cranes into a class by themselves for their
special glory, and jumble together all others, including man, in the class
of beasts. An error of this kind can only be avoided by a more regular
subdivision. Just now we divided the whole class of animals into
gregarious and non-gregarious, omitting the previous division into tame
and wild. We forgot this in our hurry to arrive at man, and found by
experience, as the proverb says, that 'the more haste the worse speed.'
And now let us begin again at the art of managing herds. You have
probably heard of the fish-preserves in the Nile and in the ponds of the
Great King, and of the nurseries of geese and cranes in Thessaly. These
suggest a new division into the rearing or management of land-herds
and of water-herds:-- I need not say with which the king is concerned.
And land-herds may be divided into walking and flying; and every idiot
knows that the political animal is a pedestrian. At this point we may
take a longer or a shorter road, and as we are already near the end, I see
no harm in taking the longer, which is the way of mesotomy, and
accords with the principle which we were laying down. The tame,
walking, herding animal, may be divided into two classes--the horned

and the hornless, and the king is concerned with the hornless; and these
again may be subdivided into animals having or not having cloven feet,
or mixing or not mixing the breed; and the king or statesman has the
care of animals which have not cloven feet, and which do not mix the
breed. And now, if we omit dogs, who can hardly be said to herd, I
think that we have only two species left which remain undivided: and
how are we to distinguish them? To geometricians, like you and
Theaetetus, I can have no difficulty in explaining that man is a diameter,
having a power of two feet; and the power of four-legged creatures,
being the double of two feet, is the diameter of our diameter. There is
another excellent jest which I spy in the two remaining species. Men
and birds are both bipeds, and human beings are running a race with the
airiest and freest of creation, in which they are far behind their
competitors;--this is a great joke, and there is a still better in the
juxtaposition of the bird-taker and the king, who may be seen
scampering after them. For, as we remarked in discussing the Sophist,
the dialectical method is no respecter of persons. But we might have
proceeded, as I was saying, by another and a shorter road. In that case
we should have begun by dividing land animals into bipeds and
quadrupeds, and bipeds into winged and wingless; we should than have
taken the Statesman and set him over the 'bipes implume,' and put the
reins of government into his hands.
Here let us sum up:--The science of pure knowledge had a part which
was the science of command, and this had a part which was a science of
wholesale command; and this was divided into the management of
animals, and was again parted off into the management of herds of
animals, and again of land animals, and these into hornless, and these
into bipeds; and so at last we arrived at man, and found the political
and royal science. And yet we have not clearly distinguished the
political shepherd from his rivals. No one would think of usurping the
prerogatives of the ordinary shepherd, who on all hands is admitted to
be the trainer, matchmaker, doctor, musician of his flock. But the royal
shepherd has numberless competitors, from whom he must be
distinguished; there are merchants, husbandmen, physicians, who