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Str. I think there is one; please help me in making the section.
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Y. Soc. On what line?
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Str. Take the case of all those whom we conceive of as rulers who give commands: shall we not find that they all issue commands for the sake of producing something?
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Y. Soc. Of course.
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Str. Furthermore it is not at all difficult to divide all that is produced into two classes.
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Y. Soc. How?
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Str. Of the whole class, some have life and others have no life.
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Y. Soc. Yes.
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Str. And on these same lines we may, if we like, make a division of the part of intellectual science which commands.
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Y. Soc. In what way?
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Str. By assigning one part of it to the production of lifeless, the other to that of living objects; and in this way the whole will be divided into two parts.
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Y. Soc. Certainly.
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Str. Let us then leave one half and take up the other, and then let us divide that entire half into two parts.
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Y. Soc. Which half shall we take up?
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Str. That which issues commands relating to living objects, assuredly. For certainly the science of the king is not, like that of the architect, one which supervises lifeless objects; it is a nobler science, since it exercises its power among living beings and in relation to them alone.
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Y. Soc. True.
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Str. Now you may notice that the breeding and nurture of living beings is sometimes the nurture of a single animal and sometimes the common care of creatures in droves.
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Y. Soc. True.
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Str. But we shall find that the statesman is not one who tends a single creature, like the driver of a single ox or the groom who tends a horse; he has more resemblance to a man who tends a herd of cattle or a drove of horses.
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Y. Soc. That seems to be true, now that you mention it.
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Str. Shall we call the art of caring for many living creatures the art of tending a herd or something like community management?
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Y. Soc. Whichever we happen to say.
