पृष्ठ 776 / 1391

Why? he said; are they not capable of defending themselves?

No, I said; not if we were right in the principle which was

acknowledged by all of us when we were framing the State: the

principle, as you will remember, was that one man cannot practise

many arts with success.

Very true, he said.

But is not war an art?

Certainly.

And an art requiring as much attention as shoemaking?

Quite true.

And the shoemaker was not allowed by us to be a husbandman, or a

weaver, or a builder-in order that we might have our shoes well

made; but to him and to every other worker was assigned one work

for which he was by nature fitted, and at that he was to continue

working all his life long and at no other; he was not to let

opportunities slip, and then he would become a good workman. Now

nothing can be more important than that the work of a soldier

should be well done. But is war an art so easily acquired that a

man may be a warrior who is also a husbandman, or shoemaker, or

other artisan; although no one in the world would be a good dice

or draught player who merely took up the game as a recreation,

and had not from his earliest years devoted himself to this and

nothing else? No tools will make a man a skilled workman, or

master of defence, nor be of any use to him who has not learned

how to handle them, and has never bestowed any attention upon

them.