and a class could still be made somewhat plainer.

  Str. O Socrates, best of men, you are imposing upon me a very
difficult task. We have already digressed further from our original
intention than we ought, and you would have us wander still further
away. But we must now return to our subject; and hereafter, when there
is a leisure hour, we will follow up the other track; at the same time
I wish you to guard against imagining that you ever heard me declare-

  Y. Soc. What?

  Str. That a class and a part are distinct.

  Y. Soc. What did I hear, then?

  Str. That a class is necessarily a part, but there is no similar
necessity that a part should be a dass; that is the view which I
should always wish you to attribute to me, Socrates.

  Y. Soc. So be it.

  Str. There is another thing which I should like to know.

  Y. Soc. What is it?

  Str. The point at which we digressed; for, if I am not mistaken, the
exact place was at the question, Where you would divide the management
of herds. To this you appeared rather too ready to answer that them
were two species of animals; man being one, and all brutes making up
the other.

  Y. Soc. True.

  Str. I thought that in taking away a part you imagined that the
remainder formed a class, because you were able to call them by the
common name of brutes.

  Y. Soc. That again is true.

  Str. Suppose now, O most courageous of dialecticians, that some wise
and understanding creature, such as a crane is reputed to be, were, in
imitation of you, to make a similar division, and set up cranes
against all other animals to their own special glorification, at the
same time jumbling together all the others, including man, under the
appellation of brutes,-here would be the sort of error which we must
try to avoid.

  Y. Soc. How can we be safe?

  Str. If we do not divide the whole class of animals, we shall be
less likely to fall into that error.

  Y. Soc. We had better not take the whole?

  Str. Yes, there lay the source of error in our former division.

  Y. Soc. How?

  Str. You remember how that part of the art of knowledge which was
concerned with command, had to do with the rearing of living
creatures,-I mean, with animals in herds?

  Y. Soc. Yes.

  Str. In that case, there was already implied a division of all
animals into tame and wild; those whose nature can be tamed are called
tame, and those which cannot be tamed are called wild.

  Y. Soc. True.

  Str. And the political science of which we are in search, is and
ever was concerned with tame animals, and is also confined to
gregarious animals.

  Y. Soc. Yes.

  Str. But then ought not to divide, as we did, taking the whole class
at once. Neither let us be in too great haste to arrive quickly at the
political science; for this mistake has already brought upon us the
misfortune of which the proverb speaks.

  Y. Soc. What misfortune?

  Str. The misfortune of too much haste, which is too little speed.

  Y. Soc. And all the better, Stranger;-we got what we deserved.

  Str. Very well: Let us then begin again, and endeavour to divide the
collective rearing of animals; for probably the completion of the
argument will best show what you are so anxious to know. Tell me,
then-

  Y. Soc. What?

  Str. Have you ever heard, as you very likely may-for I do not
suppose that you ever actually visited them-of the preserves of fishes
in the Nile, and in the ponds of the Great King; or you may have
seen similar preserves in wells at home?

  Y. Soc. Yes, to be sure, I have seen them, and I have often heard