POLITICUS (Statesman) by Plato - Complete text

Page 32

Str. 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 antidoter, 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.

Y. Soc. Very true.

Str. Yes, my boy, but that is not all; for the first process to which the material is subjected is the opposite of weaving.

Y. Soc. How so?

Str. Weaving is a sort of uniting?

Y. Soc. Yes.

Str. But the first process is a separation of the clotted and matted fibres?

Y. Soc. What do you mean?

Str. I mean the work of the carder's art; for we cannot say that carding is weaving, or that the carder is a weaver.

Y. Soc. Certainly not.

Str. 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.

Y. Soc. To be sure.

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