Statesman

Str. And yet tame gregarious animals have all, with the exception of about two species, been already divided; for dogs are not properly to be counted among gregarious creatures.

Y. Soc. No, they are not. But how shall we divide the two species?

Str. As you and Theaetetus ought by rights to divide them, since you are interested in geometry.

Y. Soc. How do you mean?

Str. By the diameter, of course, and again by the diameter of the square of the diameter.

Y. Soc. What do you mean by that?

Str. Is the nature which our human race possesses related to walking in any other way than as the diameter which is the square root of two feet?

Y. Soc. No.

Str. And the nature of the remaining species, again, considered from the point of view of the square root, is the diameter of the square of our root, if it is the nature of twice two feet.

Y. Soc. Of course; and now I think I almost understand what you wish to make plain.

Str. Socrates, do we see that besides this something else has turned up in these divisions of ours which would be a famous joke?

Y. Soc. No. What is it?

Str. Our human race shares the same lot and runs in the same heat as the most excellent and at the same time most easy-going race of creatures.

Y. Soc. Yes, I see that; it is a very queer result.

Str. Indeed? But is it not reasonable that they arrive last, who are the slowest?

Y. Soc. Yes, that is true.

Str. And do we fail to notice this further point, that the king appears in a still more ridiculous light, running along with the herd and paired in the race with the man of all others who is most in training for a life of careless ease?

Y. Soc. Certainly he does.

Str. For now, Socrates, we have shown more clearly the truth of that which we said yesterday in our search for the sophist.

Y. Soc. What was it?

Str. That this method of argument pays no more heed to the noble than to the ignoble, and no less honor to the small than to the great, but always goes on its own way to the most perfect truth.

Y. Soc. So it seems.

Str. Then shall I now, without waiting for you to ask me, guide you of my own accord along that shorter way referred to a moment ago that leads to the definition of the king?

Y. Soc. By all means.

Str. I say, then, that we ought at that time to have divided walking animals immediately into biped and quadruped, then seeing that the human race falls into the same division with the feathered creatures and no others, we must again divide the biped class into featherless and feathered, and when that division is made and the art of herding human beings is made plain, we ought to take the statesmanlike and kingly man and place him as a sort of charioteer therein, handing over to him the reins of the state, because that is his own proper science.