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.

  Str. Shall we call this art of tending many animals together, the
art of managing a herd, or the art of collective management?

  Y. Soc. No matter;-Whichever suggests itself to us in the course
of conversation.

  Str. 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?

  Y. Soc. I will try;-there appears to me to be one management of
men and another of beasts.

  Str. 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.

  Y. Soc. What is the error?

  Str. 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.

  Y. Soc. What do you mean, Stranger?

  Str. I will endeavour to speak more plainly out of love to your good
parts, Socrates; and, although I cannot at present entirely explain
myself, I will try, as we proceed, to make my meaning a little
clearer.

  Y. Soc. What was the error of which, as you say, we were guilty in
our recent division?

  Str. The error was just as if some one who wanted to divide the
human race, were to divide them after the fashion which prevails in
this part of the world; here they cut off the Hellenes as one species,
and all the other species of mankind, which are innumerable, and
have no ties or common language, they include under the single name of
"barbarians," and because they have one name they are supposed to be
of one species also. Or suppose that in dividing numbers you were to
cut off ten thousand from all the rest, and make of it one species,
comprehending the first under another separate name, you might say
that here too was a single class, because you had given it a single
name. Whereas you would make a much better and more equal and
logical classification of numbers, if you divided them into odd and
even; or of the human species, if you divided them into male and
female; and only separated off Lydians or Phrygians, or any other
tribe, and arrayed them against the rest of the world, when you
could no longer make a division into parts which were also classes.

  Y. Soc. Very true; but I wish that this distinction between a part