Page - 809 - in The Complete Plato

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? 809