Page - 804 - in The Complete Plato

STRANGER: Very good. Young Socrates, do you hear what the elder Socrates is proposing? YOUNG SOCRATES: I do. STRANGER: And do you agree to his proposal? YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. STRANGER: As you do not object, still less can I. After the Sophist, then, I think that the Statesman naturally follows next in the order of enquiry. And please to say, whether he, too, should be ranked among those who have science. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: Then the sciences must be divided as before? YOUNG SOCRATES: I dare say. STRANGER: But yet the division will not be the same? YOUNG SOCRATES: How then? STRANGER: They will be divided at some other point. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes. STRANGER: Where shall we discover the path of the Statesman? We must find and separate off, and set our seal upon this, and we will set the mark of another class upon all diverging paths. Thus the soul will conceive of all kinds of knowledge under two classes. YOUNG SOCRATES: To find the path is your business, Stranger, and not mine. STRANGER: Yes, Socrates, but the discovery, when once made, must be yours as well as mine. YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good. STRANGER: Well, and are not arithmetic and certain other kindred arts, merely abstract knowledge, wholly separated from action? YOUNG SOCRATES: True. STRANGER: But in the art of carpentering and all other handicrafts, the knowledge of the workman is merged in his work; he not only knows, but he also makes things which previously did not exist. YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. STRANGER: Then let us divide sciences in general into those which are 804