Jowett: weaving

Socrates   : And by gymnastic over the body, but by weaving [128d] and the rest over what belongs to the body ? ALCIBIADES I

And the healing art, my friend, and building, and weaving, and doing anything whatever which is done by art, — these all clearly come under the head of doing ? CHARMIDES  

That is not the true way of pursuing the enquiry, Socrates, he said ; for wisdom is not like the other sciences, any more than they are like one another : but you proceed as if they were alike. For tell me, he said, what result is there of computation or geometry, in the same sense as a house is the result of building, or a garment of weaving, or any other work of any other art ? Can you show me any such result of them ? You cannot. CHARMIDES

Then I must say that your father is pleased to inflict many lords and masters on you. But at any rate when you go home to your mother, she will let you have your own way, and will not interfere with your happiness ; her wool, or the piece of cloth which she is weaving, are at your disposal : I am sure that there is nothing to hinder you from touching her wooden spathe, or her comb, or any other of her spinning implements. LYSIS  

Soc. Very good then ; as you profess to be a rhetorician, and a maker of rhetoricians, let me ask you, with what is rhetoric concerned : I might ask with what is weaving concerned, and you would reply (would you not ?), with the making of garments ? GORGIAS

Soc. Suppose that I ask, "What sort of instrument is a shuttle ?" And you answer, "A weaving instrument." CRATYLUS  

Of his courage and justice and temperance I have spoken, but I have yet to speak of his wisdom — and according to the measure of my ability I must try to do my best. In the first place he is a poet (and here, like Eryximachus, I magnify my art), and he is also the source of poesy in others, which he could not be if he were not himself a poet. And at the touch of him every one becomes a poet, even though he had no music in him before ; this also is a proof that Love is a good poet and accomplished in all the fine arts ; for no one can give to another that which he has not himself, or teach that of which he has no knowledge. Who will deny that the creation of the animals is his doing ? Are they not all the works his wisdom, born and begotten of him ? And as to the artists, do we not know that he only of them whom love inspires has the light of fame ? — he whom Love touches riot walks in darkness. The arts of medicine and archery and divination were discovered by Apollo, under the guidance of love and desire ; so that he too is a disciple of Love. Also the melody of the Muses, the metallurgy of Hephaestus, the weaving of Athene, the empire of Zeus over gods and men, are all due to Love, who was the inventor of them. And so Love set in order the empire of the gods — the love of beauty, as is evident, for with deformity Love has no concern. In the days of old, as I began by saying, dreadful deeds were done among the gods, for they were ruled by Necessity ; but now since the birth of Love, and from the Love of the beautiful, has sprung every good in heaven and earth. Therefore, Phaedrus  , I say of Love that he is the fairest and best in himself, and the cause of what is fairest and best in all other things. And there comes into my mind a line of poetry in which he is said to be the god who SYMPOSIUM  

"What then is Love ?" I asked ; "Is he mortal ?" "No." "What then ?" "As in the former instance, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean between the two." "What is he, Diotima ?" "He is a great spirit (daimon), and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal." "And what," I said, "is his power ?" "He interprets," she replied, "between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods ; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet and the priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all, prophecy and incantation, find their way. For God mingles not with man ; but through Love. all the intercourse, and converse of god with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on. The wisdom which understands this is spiritual ; all other wisdom, such as that of arts and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar. Now these spirits or intermediate powers are many and diverse, and one of them is Love. "And who," I said, "was his father, and who his mother ?" "The tale," she said, "will take time ; nevertheless I will tell you. On the birthday of Aphrodite there was a feast of the gods, at which the god Poros or Plenty, who is the son of Metis or Discretion, was one of the guests. When the feast was over, Penia or Poverty, as the manner is on such occasions, came about the doors to beg. Now Plenty who was the worse for nectar (there was no wine in those days), went into the garden of Zeus and fell into a heavy sleep, and Poverty considering her own straitened circumstances, plotted to have a child by him, and accordingly she lay down at his side and conceived love, who partly because he is naturally a lover of the beautiful, and because Aphrodite is herself beautiful, and also because he was born on her birthday, is her follower and attendant. And as his parentage is, so also are his fortunes. In the first place he is always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the many imagine him ; and he is rough and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in ; on the bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven, in the streets, or at the doors of houses, taking his rest ; and like his mother he is always in distress. Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles, he is always plotting against the fair and good ; he is bold, enterprising, strong, a mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or other, keen in the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in resources ; a philosopher at all times, terrible as an enchanter, sorcerer, sophist. He is by nature neither mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is in plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his father’s nature. But that which is always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth ; and, further, he is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge. The truth of the matter is this : No god is a philosopher. or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already ; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the ignorant seek after Wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself : he has no desire for that of which he feels no want." "But — who then, Diotima," I said, "are the lovers   of wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish ?" "A child may answer that question," she replied ; "they are those who are in a mean between the two ; Love is one of them. For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love is of the beautiful ; and therefore Love is also a philosopher : or lover of wisdom, and being a lover of wisdom is in a mean between the wise and the ignorant. And of this too his birth is the cause ; for his father is wealthy and wise, and his mother poor and foolish. Such, my dear Socrates, is the nature of the spirit Love. The error in your conception of him was very natural, and as I imagine from what you say, has arisen out of a confusion of love and the beloved, which made you think that love was all beautiful. For the beloved is the truly beautiful, and delicate, and perfect, and blessed ; but the principle of love is of another nature, and is such as I have described." SYMPOSIUM

Certainly not ! For not in that way does the soul of a philosopher reason ; she will not ask philosophy to release her in order that when released she may deliver herself up again to the thraldom of pleasures and pains, doing a work only to be undone again, weaving instead of unweaving her Penelope’s web. But she will make herself a calm of passion and follow Reason, and dwell in her, beholding the true and divine (which is not matter of opinion), and thence derive nourishment. Thus she seeks to live while she lives, and after death she hopes to go to her own kindred and to be freed from human ills. Never fear, Simmias and Cebes, that a soul which has been thus nurtured and has had these pursuits, will at her departure from the body be scattered and blown away by the winds and be nowhere and nothing. PHAEDO  

Str. What model is there which is small, and yet has any analogy with the political occupation ? Suppose, Socrates, that if we have no other example at hand, we choose weaving, or, more precisely, weaving of wool — this will be quite enough, without taking the whole of weaving, to illustrate our meaning ? STATESMAN

Str. Why should we not apply to weaving the same processes of division and subdivision which we have already applied to other classes ; going once more as rapidly as we can through all the steps until we come to that which is needed for our purpose ? STATESMAN

Str. All things which we make or acquire are either creative or preventive ; of the preventive class are antidotes, divine and human, and also defences ; and defences are either military weapons or protections ; and protections are veils, and also shields against heat and cold, and shields against heat and cold are shelters and coverings ; and coverings are blankets and garments ; and garments are some of them in one piece, and others of them are made in several parts ; and of these latter some are stitched, others are fastened and not stitched ; and of the not stitched, some are made of the sinews of plants, and some of hair ; and of these, again, some are cemented with water and earth, and others are fastened together by themselves. And these last defences and coverings which are fastened together by themselves are called clothes, and the art which superintends them we may call, from the nature of the operation, the art of clothing, just as before the art of the Statesman   was derived from the State ; and may we not say that the art of weaving, at least that largest portion of it which was concerned with the making of clothes, differs only in name from this art of clothing, in the same way that, in the previous case, the royal science differed from the political ? STATESMAN

Str. In the next place, let us make the reflection, that the art of weaving clothes, which an incompetent person might fancy to have been sufficiently described, has been separated off from several others which are of the same family, but not from the co-operative arts. STATESMAN

Str. I see that I have not taken you with me. So I think that we had better go backwards, starting from the end. We just now parted off from the weaving of clothes, the making of blankets, which differ from each other in that one is put under and the other is put around ! and these are what I termed kindred arts. STATESMAN

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. STATESMAN

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

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. STATESMAN

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. STATESMAN

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

Str. 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. STATESMAN

Str. Besides these, there are the arts which make tools and instruments of weaving, and which will claim at least to be cooperative causes in every work of the weaver. STATESMAN

Str. 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 ? STATESMAN

Str. And once more, Socrates, we must divide the part which belongs at once both to woolworking and composition, if we are ever to discover satisfactorily the aforesaid art of weaving. STATESMAN

Str. And, now, there can be no mistake about the nature of the part of weaving which we have undertaken to define. For when that part of the art of composition which is employed in the working of wool forms a web by the regular intertexture of warp and woof, the entire woven substance is called by us a woollen garment, and the art which presides over this is the art of weaving. STATESMAN

Str. But why did we not say at once that weaving is the art of entwining warp and woof, instead of making a long and useless circuit ? STATESMAN

Str. And would not this doctrine be the ruin of all the arts and their creations ; would not the art of the Statesman and the aforesaid art of weaving disappear ? For all these arts are on the watch against excess and defect, not as unrealities, but as real evils, which occasion a difficulty in action ; and the excellence of beauty of every work of art is due to this observance of measure. STATESMAN

Str. Still less would any rational man seek to analyse the notion of weaving for its own sake. But people seem to forget that some things have sensible images, which are readily known, and can be easily pointed out when any one desires to answer an enquirer without any trouble or argument ; whereas the greatest and highest truths have no outward image of themselves visible to man, which he who wishes to satisfy the soul of the enquirer can adapt to the eye of sense, and therefore we ought to train ourselves to give and accept a rational account of them ; for immaterial things, which are the noblest and greatest, are shown only in thought and idea, and in no other way, and all that we are now saying is said for the sake of them. Moreover, there is always less difficulty in fixing the mind on small matters than on great. STATESMAN

Str. I wanted to get rid of any impression of tediousness which we may have experienced in the discussion about weaving, and the reversal of the universe, and in the discussion concerning the Sophist and the being of not-being. I know that they were felt to be too long, and I reproached myself with this, fearing that they might be not only tedious but irrelevant ; and all that I have now said is only designed to prevent the recurrence of any such disagreeables for the future. STATESMAN

Str. And yet, not everything is to be judged even with a view to what is fitting ; for we should only want such a length as is suited to give pleasure, if at all, as a secondary matter ; and reason tells us, that we should be contented to make the ease or rapidity of an enquiry, not our first, but our second object ; the first and highest of all being to assert the great method of division according to species — whether the discourse be shorter or longer is not to the point. No offence should be taken at length, but the longer and shorter are to be employed indifferently, according as either of them is better calculated to sharpen the wits of the auditors. Reason would also say to him who censures the length of discourses on such occasions and cannot away with their circumlocution, that he should not be in such a hurry to have done with them, when he can only complain that they are tedious, but he should prove that if they had been shorter they would have made those who took part in them better dialecticians, and more capable of expressing the truth of things ; about any other praise and blame, he need not trouble himself — he should pretend not to hear them. But we have had enough of this, as you will probably agree with me in thinking. Let us return to our Statesman, and apply to his case the aforesaid example of weaving. STATESMAN

Str. What we did in the example of weaving — all those arts which furnish the tools were regarded by us as co-operative. STATESMAN

Str. Then, now that we have discovered the various classes in a State, shall I analyse politics after the pattern which weaving supplied ? STATESMAN

Str. Then the true and natural art of statesmanship will never allow any State to be formed by a combination of good and bad men, if this can be avoided ; but will begin by testing human natures in play, and after testing them, will entrust them to proper teachers who are the ministers of her purposes — she will herself give orders, and maintain authority ; just as the art of weaving continually gives orders and maintains authority over the carders and all the others who prepare the material for the work, commanding the subsidiary arts to execute the works which she deems necessary for making the web. STATESMAN

Str. It was of these bonds I said that there would be no difficulty in creating them, if only both classes originally held the same opinion about the honourable and good ; — indeed, in this single work, the whole process of royal weaving is comprised — never to allow temperate natures to be separated from the brave, but to weave them together, like the warp and the woof, by common sentiments and honours and reputation, and by the giving of pledges to one another ; and out of them forming one smooth and even web, to entrust to them the offices of State. STATESMAN

These elements, therefore, God employed for the sake of distributing moisture from the belly into the veins, weaving together network of fire and air like a weel, having at the entrance two lesser weels ; further he constructed one of these with two openings, and from the lesser weels he extended cords reaching all round to the extremities of the network. All the interior of the net he made of fire, but the lesser weels and their cavity, of air. The network he took and spread over the newly-formed animal in the following manner : — He let the lesser weels pass into the mouth ; there were two of them, and one he let down by the air-pipes into the lungs, the other by the side of the air-pipes into the belly. The former he divided into two branches, both of which he made to meet at the channels of the nose, so that when the way through the mouth did not act, the streams of the mouth as well were replenished through the nose. With the other cavity (i.e. of the greater weel) he enveloped the hollow parts of the body, and at one time he made all this to flow into the lesser weels, quite gently, for they are composed of air, and at another time he caused the lesser weels to flow back again ; and the net he made to find a way in and out through the pores of the body, and the rays of fire which are bound fast within followed the passage of the air either way, never at any time ceasing so long as the mortal being holds together. This process, as we affirm, the name-giver named inspiration and expiration. And all this movement, active as well as passive, takes place in order that the body, being watered and cooled, may receive nourishment and life ; for when the respiration is going in and out, and the fire, which is fast bound within, follows it, and ever and anon moving to and fro, enters through the belly and reaches the meat and drink, it dissolves them, and dividing them into small portions and guiding them through the passages where it goes, pumps them as from a fountain into the channels of the veins, and makes the stream of the veins flow through the body as through a conduit. TIMAEUS  

Ath. In the first place, the desolation of these primitive men would create in them a feeling of affection and good-will towards one another ; and, secondly, they would have no occasion to quarrel about their subsistence, for they would have pasture in abundance, except just at first, and in some particular cases ; and from their pasture-land they would obtain the greater part of their food in a primitive age, having plenty of milk and flesh ; moreover they would procure other food by the chase, not to be despised either in quantity or quality. They would also have abundance of clothing, and bedding, and dwellings, and utensils either capable of standing on the fire or not ; for the plastic and weaving arts do not require any use of iron : and God has given these two arts to man in order to provide him with all such things, that, when reduced to the last extremity, the human race may still grow and increase. Hence in those days mankind were not very poor ; nor was poverty a cause of difference among them ; and rich they could not have been, having neither gold nor silver : — such at that time was their condition. And the community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles ; in it there is no insolence or injustice, nor, again, are there any contentions or envyings. And therefore they were good, and also because they were what is called simple-minded ; and when they were told about good and evil, they in their simplicity believed what they heard to be very truth and practised it. No one had the wit to suspect another of a falsehood, as men do now ; but what they heard about Gods and men they believed to be true, and lived accordingly ; and therefore they were in all respects such as we have described them. LAWS BOOK III

Ath. And what arrangement of life to be found anywhere is preferable to this community which we are now assigning to them ? Shall we prefer that which is adopted by the Thracians and many other races who use their women to till the ground and to be shepherds of their herds and flocks, and to minister to them like slaves ? — Or shall we do as we and people in our part of the world do — getting together, as the phrase is, all our goods and chattels into one dwelling, we entrust them to our women, who are the stewards of them, and who also preside over the shuttles and the whole art of spinning ? Or shall we take a middle course, in Lacedaemon, Megillus — letting the girls share in gymnastic and music, while the grown-up women, no longer employed in spinning wool, are hard at work weaving the web of life, which will be no cheap or mean employment, and in the duty of serving and taking care of the household and bringing up children, in which they will observe a sort of mean, not participating in the toils of war ; and if there were any necessity that they should fight for their city and families, unlike the Amazons, they would be unable to take part in archery or any other skilled use of missiles, nor could they, after the example of the Goddess, carry shield or spear, or stand up nobly for their country when it was being destroyed, and strike terror into their enemies, if only because they were seen in regular order ? Living as they do, they would never dare at all to imitate the Sauromatides, who, when compared with ordinary women, would appear to be like men. Let him who will, praise your legislators, but I must say what I think. The legislator ought to be whole and perfect, and not half a man only ; he ought not to let the female sex live softly and waste money and have no order of life, while he takes the utmost care of the male sex, and leaves half of life only blest with happiness, when he might have made the whole state happy. LAWS BOOK VII

And surely the art of the painter and every other creative and constructive art are full of them — weaving, embroidery, architecture, and every kind of manufacture ; also nature, animal and vegetable — in all of them there is grace or the absence of grace. And ugliness and discord and inharmonious motion are nearly allied to ill-words and ill-nature, as grace and harmony are the twin sisters of goodness and virtue and bear their likeness. THE REPUBLIC   BOOK III

And can you mention any pursuit of mankind in which the male sex has not all these gifts and qualities in a higher degree than the female ? Need I waste time in speaking of the art of weaving, and the management of pancakes and preserves, in which womankind does really appear to be great, and in which for her to be beaten by a man is of all things the most absurd ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V