der one term by joining together three names--shepherding pure-bred
animals. The only further subdivision is the art of man-herding,--this
has to do with bipeds, and is what we were seeking after, and have now
found, being at once the royal and political.

YOUNG SOCRATES: To be sure.

STRANGER: And do you think, Socrates, that we really have done as you
say?

YOUNG SOCRATES: What?

STRANGER: Do you think, I mean, that we have really fulfilled
our intention?--There has been a sort of discussion, and yet the
investigation seems to me not to be perfectly worked out: this is where
the enquiry fails.

YOUNG SOCRATES: I do not understand.

STRANGER: I will try to make the thought, which is at this moment
present in my mind, clearer to us both.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Let me hear.

STRANGER: There were many arts of shepherding, and one of them was the
political, which had the charge of one particular herd?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And this the argument defined to be the art of rearing, not
horses or other brutes, but the art of rearing man collectively?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: Note, however, a difference which distinguishes the king from
all other shepherds.

YOUNG SOCRATES: To what do you refer?

STRANGER: I want to ask, whether any one of the other herdsmen has a
rival who professes and claims to share with him in the management of
the herd?

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: I mean to say that merchants, husbandmen, providers of food,
and also training-masters and physicians, will all contend with the
herdsmen of humanity, whom we call Statesmen, declaring that they
themselves have the care of rearing or managing mankind, and that they
rear not only the common herd, but also the rulers themselves.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Are they not right in saying so?

STRANGER: Very likely they may be, and we will consider their claim.
But we are certain of this,--that no one will raise a similar claim as
against the herdsman, who is allowed on all hands to be the sole and
only feeder and physician of his herd; he is also their match-maker
and accoucheur; no one else knows that department of science. And he is
their merry-maker and musician, as far as their nature is susceptible of
such influences, and no one can console and soothe his own herd
better than he can, either with the natural tones of his voice or with
instruments. And the same may be said of tenders of animals in general.

YOUNG SOCRA