Statesman (267-271)

Y. Soc. You have cleared up the argument finely, and as if it were a debt you were paying, you threw in the digression as interest and for good measure.

Str. Now let us go back to the beginning and join together the definition of the name of the statesman’s art link by link to the end.

Y. Soc. By all means.

Str. In the first place we said that intellectual science had a part that gives commands; and a portion of this was called by a comparison the part that gives its own commands; and again the art of rearing living beings was singled out, which is by no means the smallest part of the art which gives its own commands; and a class of rearing living beings was herd-tending, and a part of this again the herding of walking animals; and from the herding of walking animals the art of rearing those without horns was divided. And of this in turn one part will have to be treated as no less than threefold, if it is to be called by one comprehensive name, and it will be called (1) the science (2) of tending herds (3) which do not cross breeds. But the only possible further subdivision of this is the art of herding human beings, and this is at last what we are looking for, the single art called both kingly and statesmanlike.

Y. Soc. That is perfectly true.

Str. And yet, Socrates, have we truly accomplished this, exactly as you have said?

Y. Soc. Accomplished what?

Str. The perfectly satisfactory discussion of our subject. Or is our investigation incomplete in just this detail, that we have given a definition after a fashion, but have not perfectly completed it?

Y. Soc. What do you mean?

Str. I will try to make still plainer to us both the thought which I now have in mind.

Y. Soc. Please do so.

Str. We found just now that there were many arts of herding, and one of them was the art of statesmanship, which was the care of one particular kind of herd, did we not?

Y. Soc. Yes.

Str. And our argument defined this, not as the tending of horses or other beasts, but as the science of tending men in common.

Y. Soc. Yes, it did.

Str. Let us, then, observe the point of difference between kings and all other herdsmen.

Y. Soc. What point of difference?

Str. Let us see whether anyone who is designated by the name of another art says and claims that he is fellow manager of the herd in common with any of the other kinds of herdsmen.

Y. Soc. What do you mean?

Str. For instance, merchants, husbandmen, and all who prepare grain for use, and also gymnastic trainers and physicians would certainly all dispute with the herdsmen of humanity, whom we have called statesmen, and would assert that they themselves take care of the tending of humanity, and not the tending of the common herd only, but even that of the rulers themselves, would they not?

Y. Soc. And would they be right?

Str. Perhaps. We will examine that matter; but this we know, that no one will ever raise such a contention against any neatherd, but the herdsman himself tends the herd, he is their physician, he is their matchmaker, and he alone knows the midwife’s science of aiding at the birth of their offspring. Moreover, so far as the nature of the creatures allows them to enjoy sport or music, no one can enliven or soothe them better than he; whether with instruments or merely with his voice he performs the music best suited to his own herd; and the same applies to the other herdsmen. Is not that the case?

Y. Soc. You are quite right.

Str. Then how can our discourse about the king be right and free from error, when we pick him out alone as herdsman and tender of the human herd, while countless others dispute his claim?

Y. Soc. It cannot possibly be right.

Str. We suspected a little while ago that although we might be outlining a sort of kingly shape we had not yet perfected an accurate portrait of the statesman, and could not do so until, by removing those who crowd about him and contend with him for a share in his herdsmanship, we separated him from them and made him stand forth alone and uncontaminated. Was our fear justified?

Y. Soc. It certainly was.

Str. Then we must attend to that, Socrates, if we are not to end our argument in disgrace.

Y. Soc. But we certainly must not do that.

Str. Then we must begin again from a new sarting-point and travel by a different road.

Y. Soc. By what road?

Str. By one which offers us some amusement; for there is a famous story a great part of which it is really our duty to insert into our discussion; and then after that we can proceed as before, by eliminating part after part, and in that way reach the ultimate object of our search. Shall we do that?

Y. Soc. By all means.

Str. Then please pay careful attention to my story, just as if you were a child; and anyway you are not much too old for children’s tales.

Y. Soc. Please tell the story.

Str. Of the portents recorded in ancient tales many did happen and will happen again. Such an one is the portent connected with the tale of the quarrel between Atreus and Thyestes. You have doubtless heard of it and remember what is said to have taken place.

Y. Soc. You refer, I suppose, to the token of the golden lamb. [*]

Str. Oh no; I mean the change in the rising and setting of the sun and the other heavenly bodies, how in those times they used to set in the quarter where they now rise, and used to rise where they now set, but the god at the time of the quarrel, you recall, changed all that to the present system as a testimony in favor of Atreus.

Y. Soc. Yes, I’ve heard that, too.

Str. And again we have often heard the tale of the reign of Cronus.

Y. Soc. Yes, very often.

Str. And how about the story that the ancient folk were earthborn and not begotten of one another?

Y. Soc. That is one of the old tales, too.

Str. Well, all these stories and others still more remarkable have their source in one and the same event, but in the lapse of ages some of them have been lost and others are told in fragmentary and disconnected fashion. But no one has told the event which is the cause of them all, and so I must tell it now; for that will help us to make clear the nature of the king.

Y. Soc. Very good; just tell your tale and omit nothing.

Str. Listen then. During a certain period God himself goes with the universe as guide in its revolving course, but at another epoch, when the cycles have at length reached the measure of his allotted time, he lets it go, and of its own accord it turns backward in the opposite direction, since it is a living creature and is endowed with intelligence by him who fashioned it in the beginning. Now this reversal of its motion is an inevitable part of its nature for the following reason.

Y. Soc. What reason?

Str. Absolute and perpetual immutability is a property of only the most divine things of all, and body does not belong to this class. Now that which we call heaven and the universe has received from its creator many blessed qualities, but then, too, it partakes also of a bodily nature; therefore it is impossible for it to be entirely free from change; it moves, however, so far as it is able to do so, with a single motion in the same place and the same manner, and therefore it has acquired the reverse motion in a circle, because that involves the least deviation from its own motion. But to turn itself for ever is hardly possible except for the power that guides all moving things; and that this should turn now in one direction and now in the opposite direction is contrary to divine law.

Str. As the result of all this, we must not say either that the universe turns itself always, or that it is always turned by God in two opposite courses, or again that two divinities opposed to one another turn it. The only remaining alternative is what I suggested a little while ago, that the universe is guided at one time by an extrinsic divine cause, acquiring the power of living again and receiving renewed immortality from the Creator, and at another time it is left to itself and then moves by its own motion, being left to itself at such a moment that it moves backwards through countless ages, because it is immensely large and most evenly balanced, and turns upon the smallest pivot.

Y. Soc. All that account of yours appears, at any rate, very reasonable.

Str. Then, in the light of what has been said, let us consider and gain understanding of the event which we said was the cause of all those wonderful portents; for it is really just this.

Y. Soc. Just what?

Str. The fact that at certain periods the universe has its present circular motion, and at other periods it revolves in the reverse direction.

Y. Soc. How was this the cause?

Str. We cannot help believing that of all the changes which take place in the heavens this reversal is the greatest and most complete.

Y. Soc. It certainly seems to be so.

Str. Therefore we must also believe that at the same time the greatest changes come upon us who dwell within the heavens.

Y. Soc. That is likely too.

Str. And animals cannot well endure many great and various changes at once. That is a familiar fact, is it not?

Y. Soc. Of course.

Str. Inevitably, then, there is at that time great destruction of animals in general, and only a small part of the human race survives; and the survivors have many experiences wonderful and strange, the greatest of which, a consequence of the reversal of everything at the time when the world begins to turn in the direction opposed to that of its present revolution, is this. [*]

Y. Soc. What is that experience?

Str. First the age of all animals, whatever it was at the moment, stood still, and every mortal creature stopped growing older in appearance and then reversed its growth and became, as it were, younger and more tender; the hoary locks of the old men grew dark, and bearded cheeks grew smooth again as their possessors reverted to their earlier ages, and the bodies of young men grew smoother and smaller day by day and night by night, until they became as new-born babes, to which they were likened in mind and body; and then at last they wasted away entirely and wholly disappeared. And the bodies of those who died by violence in those times quickly underwent the same changes, were destroyed, and disappeared in a few days.

Y. Soc. But then, Stranger, how did animals come into existence in those days? How were they begotten of one another?

Str. It is clear, Socrates, that being begotten of one another was no part of the natural order of that time, but the earth-born race which, according to tradition, once existed, was the race which returned at that time out of the earth; and the memory of it was preserved by our earliest ancestors, who were born in the beginning of our period and therefore were next neighbors to the end of the previous period of the world’s revolution, with no interval between. For they were to us the heralds of these stories which are nowadays unduly disbelieved by many people. For you must, I think, consider what would result. It is a natural consequence of the return of the old to childhood that those who are dead and lying in the earth take shape and come to life again, since the process of birth is reversed along with the reversal of the world’s revolution; for this reason they are inevitably earth-born, and hence arises their name and the tradition about them, except those of them whom God removed to some other fate. [*]

Y. Soc. Certainly that follows from what preceded. But was the life in the reign of Cronus, which you mentioned, in that previous period of revolution or in ours? For evidently the change in the course of the stars and the sun takes place in both periods.

Str. You have followed my account very well. No, the life about which you ask, when all the fruits of the earth sprang up of their own accord for men, did not belong at all to the present period of revolution, but this also belonged to the previous one. For then, in the beginning, God ruled and supervised the whole revolution, and so again, in the same way, all the parts of the universe were divided by regions among gods who ruled them, and, moreover, the animals were distributed by species and flocks among inferior deities as divine shepherds, each of whom was in all respects the independent guardian of the creatures under his own care, so that no creature was wild, nor did they eat one another, and there was no war among them, nor any strife whatsoever. To tell all the other consequences of such an order of the world would be an endless task. But the reason for the story of the spontaneous life of mankind is as follows: