137
Yes, to be sure, he replied.
137
Then we agreed, it seems, by your account—if philosophizing means having knowledge of the arts in the way you describe—that philosophers are wicked and useless so long as there are arts among mankind. But I expect they are not so really, my friend, and that philosophizing is not just having a concernment in the arts or spending one’s life in meddlesome stooping and prying and accumulation of learning, but something else; because I imagined that this life was actually a disgrace, and that people who concerned themselves with the arts were called sordid. βάναυσος expresses the peculiar contempt felt by Greek gentlemen for the work of artisans and even artists. Manual labor was the business of slaves and persons who were unfit for military and political life. But we shall know more definitely whether this statement of mine is true, if you will answer me this: What men know how to punish horses rightly? Is it those who make them into the best horses, or some other men?
137
Those who make them into the best horses.
137
Or again, is it not the men who know how to make dogs into the best dogs that know also how to punish them rightly?
137
Yes.
137
Then it is the same art that makes them into the best dogs and punishes them rightly?
137
It appears so to me, he replied.
137
Again, is the art that makes them into the best ones and punishes them rightly the same as that which knows the good and the bad ones, or is it some other?
137
The same, he said.
