POLITICUS (Statesman) by Plato - Complete text

Page 7

Str. Nor is there any difficulty in dividing the things produced into two classes.

Y. Soc. How would you divide them?

Str. Of the whole class some have life and some are without life.

Y. Soc. True.

Str. And by the help of this distinction we may make, if we please, a subdivision of the section of knowledge which commands.

Y. Soc. At what point?

Str. One part may be set over the production of lifeless, the other of living objects; and in this way the whole will be divided.

Y. Soc. Certainly.

Str. That division, then, is complete; and now we may leave one half, and take up the other; which may also be divided into two.

Y. Soc. Which of the two halves do you men?

Str. Of course that which exercises command about animals. For, surely, the royal science is not like that of a master - workman, a science presiding over lifeless objects; - the king has a nobler function, which is the management and control of living beings.

Y. Soc. True.

Str. 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?

Y. Soc. True.

Str. 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.

Y. Soc. Yes, I see, thanks to you.

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Plato : POLITICUS

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