e 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.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

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

YOUNG SOCRATES: How so?

STRANGER: Weaving is a sort of uniting?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: But the first process is a separation of the clotted and
matted fibres?

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

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

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.

STRANGER: 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.

YOUNG SOCRATES: To be sure.

STRANGER: Shall we say that the whole art of the fuller or of the mender
has nothing to do with the care and treatment of clothes, or are we to
regard all these as arts of weaving?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.

STRANGER: And yet surely all these arts will maintain that they are
concerned with the treatment and production of clothes; they will
dispute the exclusive prerogative of weaving, and though assigning
a larger sphere to that, will still reserve a considerable field for
themselves.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Besides these, there are the arts which make tools and
instruments of weaving, and which will claim at least to be co-operative
causes in every work of the weaver.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Most true.

STRANGER: Well, then, suppose that we define weaving, or rather that
part of it which has been selected by us, to be the greatest and noblest
of arts which are concerned with woollen garments--shall we be right?
Is not the definition, although true, wanting in clearness and
completeness; for do not all those other arts require to be first
cleared away?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: Then the next thing will be to separate them, in order that
the argument may proceed in a regular manner?

YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.

STRANGER: Let us consider, in the first place, that there are two kinds
of arts entering into everything which we do.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What are they?

STRANGER: The one kind is the conditional or co-operative, the other the
principal cause.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: The