re laying down. The tame, walking, herding
animal, may be divided into two classes--the horned and the hornless,
and the king is concerned with the hornless; and these again may be
subdivided into animals having or not having cloven feet, or mixing or
not mixing the breed; and the king or statesman has the care of animals
which have not cloven feet, and which do not mix the breed. And now, if
we omit dogs, who can hardly be said to herd, I think that we have only
two species left which remain undivided: and how are we to distinguish
them? To geometricians, like you and Theaetetus, I can have no
difficulty in explaining that man is a diameter, having a power of two
feet; and the power of four-legged creatures, being the double of two
feet, is the diameter of our diameter. There is another excellent jest
which I spy in the two remaining species. Men and birds are both bipeds,
and human beings are running a race with the airiest and freest of
creation, in which they are far behind their competitors;--this is a
great joke, and there is a still better in the juxtaposition of the
bird-taker and the king, who may be seen scampering after them. For,
as we remarked in discussing the Sophist, the dialectical method is no
respecter of persons. But we might have proceeded, as I was saying,
by another and a shorter road. In that case we should have begun by
dividing land animals into bipeds and quadrupeds, and bipeds into winged
and wingless; we should than have taken the Statesman and set him over
the 'bipes implume,' and put the reins of government into his hands.

Here let us sum up:--The science of pure knowledge had a part which
was the science of command, and this had a part which was a science of
wholesale command; and this was divided into the management of animals,
and was again parted off into the management of herds of animals, and
again of land animals, and these into hornless, and these into bipeds;
and so at last we arrived at man, and found the political and royal
science. And yet we have not clearly distinguished the political
shepherd from his rivals. No one would think of usurping the
prerogatives of the ordinary shepherd, who on all hands is admitted to
be the trainer, matchmaker, doctor, musician of his flock. But the royal
shepherd has numberless competitors, from whom he must be distinguished;
there are merchants, husbandmen, physicians, who will all dispute his
right to manage the flock. I think that we can bes