e driver or groom of a single ox or horse; he is rather to be compared
with the keeper of a drove of horses or oxen.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, I see, thanks to you.

STRANGER: Shall we call this art of tending many animals together, the
art of managing a herd, or the art of collective management?

YOUNG SOCRATES: No matter;--whichever suggests itself to us in the
course of conversation.

STRANGER: Very good, Socrates; and, if you continue to be not too
particular about names, you will be all the richer in wisdom when you
are an old man. And now, as you say, leaving the discussion of the
name,--can you see a way in which a person, by showing the art of
herding to be of two kinds, may cause that which is now sought amongst
twice the number of things, to be then sought amongst half that number?

YOUNG SOCRATES: I will try;--there appears to me to be one management of
men and another of beasts.

STRANGER: You have certainly divided them in a most straightforward and
manly style; but you have fallen into an error which hereafter I think
that we had better avoid.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is the error?

STRANGER: I think that we had better not cut off a single small portion
which is not a species, from many larger portions; the part should be a
species. To separate off at once the subject of investigation, is a most
excellent plan, if only the separation be rightly made; and you were
under the impression that you were right, because you saw that you would
come to man; and this led you to hasten the steps. But you should not
chip off too small a piece, my friend; the safer way is to cut through
the middle; which is also the more likely way of finding classes.
Attention to this principle makes all the difference in a process of
enquiry.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean, Stranger?

STRANGER: I will endeavour to speak more plainly out of love to your
good parts, Socrates; and, although I cannot at present entirely explain
myself, I will try, as we proceed, to make my meaning a little clearer.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What was the error of which, as you say, we were guilty
in our recent division?

STRANGER: The error was just as if some one who wanted to divide the
human race, were to divide them after the fashion which prevails in this
part of the world; here they cut off the Hellenes as one species, and
all the other species of mankind, which are innumerable, and have
no ties or common language, they include under the single name