Statesman

Y. Soc. That is perfectly correct.

Str. Let us next reflect that a person might think that this description of the art of weaving was satisfactory, because he cannot understand that it has not yet been distinguished from the closely co-operative arts, though it has been separated from many other kindred arts.

Y. Soc. What kindred arts?

Str. You do not seem to have followed what I have been saying; so I think I had better go back again and begin at the end. For if you understand what I mean by kinship, we distinguished from clothing something akin to it a moment ago when we separated rugs from it by the distinction between spreading under and wrapping round.

Y. Soc. I understand.

Str. And we removed the entire manufacture of cloth made from flax and broom-cords and all that we just now called vegetable fibres; and then, too, we separated off the process of felting and the kind of joining that employs piercing and sewing, most important of which is the shoemaker’s art.

Y. Soc. Yes, to be sure.

Str. And we separated off the art of making coverings of leather in single pieces and all the arts of making shelters, which we find in house-building and carpentering in general and in other methods of protection against water, and all the arts which furnish protection against theft and acts of violence, the arts, that is to say, of making lids and constructing doors, which are regarded as parts of the joiner’s art; and we cut off the armorer’s art, which is a section of the great and various function of making defences; and at the very beginning we cut off the whole art of magic which is concerned with antidotes and spells, and we have left, as it would seem, just the art we were seeking, which furnishes protection from the weather, manufactures a defence of wool, and is called the art of weaving.

Y. Soc. That seems to be the case.