Seite - 811 - in The Complete Plato

STRANGER: The point at which we digressed; for, if I am not mistaken, the exact place was at the question, Where you would divide the management of herds. To this you appeared rather too ready to answer that there were two species of animals; man being one, and all brutes making up the other. YOUNG SOCRATES: True. STRANGER: I thought that in taking away a part, you imagined that the remainder formed a class, because you were able to call them by the common name of brutes. YOUNG SOCRATES: That again is true. STRANGER: Suppose now, O most courageous of dialecticians, that some wise and understanding creature, such as a crane is reputed to be, were, in imitation of you, to make a similar division, and set up cranes against all other animals to their own special glorification, at the same time jumbling together all the others, including man, under the appellation of brutes,— here would be the sort of error which we must try to avoid. YOUNG SOCRATES: How can we be safe? STRANGER: If we do not divide the whole class of animals, we shall be less likely to fall into that error. YOUNG SOCRATES: We had better not take the whole? STRANGER: Yes, there lay the source of error in our former division. YOUNG SOCRATES: How? STRANGER: You remember how that part of the art of knowledge which was concerned with command, had to do with the rearing of living creatures, —I mean, with animals in herds? YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: In that case, there was already implied a division of all animals into tame and wild; those whose nature can be tamed are called tame, and those which cannot be tamed are called wild. YOUNG SOCRATES: True. STRANGER: And the political science of which we are in search, is and ever was concerned with tame animals, and is also confined to gregarious animals. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: But then we ought not to divide, as we did, taking the whole class at once. Neither let us be in too great haste to arrive quickly at the 811