of which the most important part is the cobbler's art.

  Y. Soc. Precisely.

  Str. Then we separated off the currier's art, which prepared
coverings in entire pieces, and the art of sheltering, and
subtracted the various arts of making water-tight which are employed
in building, and in general in carpentering, and in other crafts,
and all such arts as furnish impediments to thieving and acts of
violence, and are concerned with making the lids of boxes and the
fixing of doors, being divisions of the art of joining; and we also
cut off the manufacture of arms, which is a section of the great and
manifold art of making defences; and we originally began by parting
off the whole of the magic art which is concerned with antidoter,
and have left, as would appear, the very art of which we were in
search, the art of protection against winter cold, which fabricates
woollen defences, and has the name of weaving.

  Y. Soc. Very true.

  Str. Yes, my boy, but that is not all; for the first process to
which the material is subjected is the opposite of weaving.

  Y. Soc. How so?

  Str. Weaving is a sort of uniting?

  Y. Soc. Yes.

  Str. But the first process is a separation of the clotted and matted
fibres?

  Y. Soc. What do you mean?

  Str. I mean the work of the carder's art; for we cannot say that
carding is weaving, or that the carder is a weaver.

  Y. Soc. Certainly not.

  Str. Again, if a person were to say that the art of making the
warp and the woof was the art of weaving, he would say what was
paradoxical and false.

  Y. Soc. To be sure.

  Str. Shall we say that the whole art of the fuller or of the
mender has nothing to do with the care and treatment clotes, or are we
to regard all these as arts of weaving?

  Y. Soc. Certainly not.

  Str. And yet surely all these arts will maintain that they are
concerned with the treatment and production of clothes; they will
dispute the exclusive prerogative of weaving, and though assigning a
larger sphere to that, will still reserve a considerable field for
themselves.

  Y. Soc. Very true.

  Str. Besides these, there are the arts which make tools and
instruments of weaving, and which will claim at least to be
cooperative causes in every work of the weaver.

  Y. Soc. Most true.

  Str. 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?

  Y. Soc. True.

  Str. Then the next thing will be to separate them, in order that the
argument may proceed in a regular manner?

  Y. Soc. By all means.

  Str. Let us consider, in the first place, that there are two kinds
of arts entering into everything which we do.

  Y. Soc. What are they?

  Str. The one kind is the conditional or cooperative, the other the
principal cause.

  Y. Soc. What do you mean?

  Str. 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.

  Y. Soc. A very reasonable distinction.

  Str. 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.