Page - 831 - in The Complete Plato

instruments of weaving, and which will claim at least to be co-operative causes in every work of the weaver. YOUNG SOCRATES: Most true. STRANGER: Well, then, suppose that we define weaving, or rather that part of it which has been selected by us, to be the greatest and noblest of arts which are concerned with woollen garments—shall we be right? Is not the definition, although true, wanting in clearness and completeness; for do not all those other arts require to be first cleared away? YOUNG SOCRATES: True. STRANGER: Then the next thing will be to separate them, in order that the argument may proceed in a regular manner? YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means. STRANGER: Let us consider, in the first place, that there are two kinds of arts entering into everything which we do. YOUNG SOCRATES: What are they? STRANGER: The one kind is the conditional or co-operative, the other the principal cause. YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean? STRANGER: The arts which do not manufacture the actual thing, but which furnish the necessary tools for the manufacture, without which the several arts could not fulfil their appointed work, are co-operative; but those which make the things themselves are causal. YOUNG SOCRATES: A very reasonable distinction. STRANGER: Thus the arts which make spindles, combs, and other instruments of the production of clothes, may be called co-operative, and those which treat and fabricate the things themselves, causal. YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true. STRANGER: The arts of washing and mending, and the other preparatory arts which belong to the causal class, and form a division of the great art of adornment, may be all comprehended under what we call the fuller’s art. YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good. STRANGER: Carding and spinning threads and all the parts of the process which are concerned with the actual manufacture of a woollen garment form a single art, which is one of those universally acknowledged,—the art of working in wool. 831