ributed into seven classes. We are warned against preferring the
shorter to the longer method;--if we divide in the middle, we are most
likely to light upon species; at the same time, the important remark
is made, that 'a part is not to be confounded with a class.' Having
discovered the genus under which the king falls, we proceed to
distinguish him from the collateral species. To assist our imagination
in making this separation, we require an example. The higher ideas,
of which we have a dreamy knowledge, can only be represented by images
taken from the external world. But, first of all, the nature of example
is explained by an example. The child is taught to read by comparing
the letters in words which he knows with the same letters in unknown
combinations; and this is the sort of process which we are about to
attempt. As a parallel to the king we select the worker in wool, and
compare the art of weaving with the royal science, trying to separate
either of them from the inferior classes to which they are akin. This
has the incidental advantage, that weaving and the web furnish us with a
figure of speech, which we can afterwards transfer to the State.

There are two uses of examples or images--in the first place, they
suggest thoughts--secondly, they give them a distinct form. In the
infancy of philosophy, as in childhood, the language of pictures is
natural to man: truth in the abstract is hardly won, and only by use
familiarized to the mind. Examples are akin to analogies, and have a
reflex influence on thought; they people the vacant mind, and may often
originate new directions of enquiry. Plato seems to be conscious of the
suggestiveness of imagery; the general analogy of the arts is constantly
employed by him as well as the comparison of particular arts--weaving,
the refining of gold, the learning to read, music, statuary, painting,
medicine, the art of the pilot--all of which occur in this dialogue
alone: though he is also aware that 'comparisons are slippery things,'
and may often give a false clearness to ideas. We shall find, in the
Philebus, a division of sciences into practical and speculative, and
into more or less speculative: here we have the idea of master-arts,
or sciences which control inferior ones. Besides the supreme science
of dialectic, 'which will forget us, if we forget her,' another
master-science for the first time appears in view--the science of
government, which fixes the limits of all the re