Dialogues of Plato - MobileReference [903]
YOUNG SOCRATES: Most true.
STRANGER: In the next place, let us make the reflection, that the art of weaving clothes, which an incompetent person might fancy to have been sufficiently described, has been separated off from several others which are of the same family, but not from the co-operative arts.
YOUNG SOCRATES: And which are the kindred arts?
STRANGER: I see that I have not taken you with me. So I think that we had better go backwards, starting from the end. We just now parted off from the weaving of clothes, the making of blankets, which differ from each other in that one is put under and the other is put around: and these are what I termed kindred arts.
YOUNG SOCRATES: I understand.
STRANGER: And we have subtracted the manufacture of all articles made of flax and cords, and all that we just now metaphorically termed the sinews of plants, and we have also separated off the process of felting and the putting together of materials by stitching and sewing, of which the most important part is the cobbler's art.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Precisely.
STRANGER: Then we separated off the currier's art, which prepared coverings in entire pieces, and the art of sheltering, and subtracted the various arts of making water-tight which are employed in building, and in general in carpentering, and in other crafts, and all such arts as furnish impediments to thieving and acts of violence, and are concerned with making the lids of boxes and the fixing of doors, being divisions of the art of joining; and we also cut off the manufacture of arms, which is a section of the great and manifold art of making defences; and we originally began by parting off the whole of the magic art which is concerned with antidotes, and have left, as would appear, the very art of which we were in search, the art of protection against winter cold, which fabricates woollen defences, and has the name of weaving.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.
STRANGER: Yes, my boy, but that is not all; for the first process to which the material is subjected is the opposite of weaving.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How so?
STRANGER: Weaving is a sort of uniting?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
STRANGER: But the first process is a separation of the clotted and matted fibres?
YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?
STRANGER: I mean the work of the carder's art; for we cannot say that carding is weaving, or that the carder is a weaver.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.
STRANGER: Again, if a person were to say that the art of making the warp and the woof was the art of weaving, he would say what was paradoxical and false.
YOUNG SOCRATES: To be sure.
STRANGER: Shall we say that the whole art of the fuller or of the mender has nothing to do with the care and treatment of clothes, or are we to regard all these as arts of weaving?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.
STRANGER: And yet surely all these arts will maintain that they are concerned with the treatment and production of clothes; they will dispute the exclusive prerogative of weaving, and though assigning a larger sphere to that, will still reserve a considerable field for themselves.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.
STRANGER: Besides these, there are the arts which make tools and instruments of weaving, and which will claim at least to be co-operative causes in every work of the weaver.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Most true.
STRANGER: Well, then, suppose that we define weaving, or rather that part of it which has been selected by us, to be the greatest and noblest of arts which are concerned with woollen garments--shall we be right? Is not the definition, although true, wanting in clearness and completeness; for do not all those other arts require to be first cleared away?