Str. And among the causal arts we may properly include washing and mending and all the care of clothing in such ways; and, since the art of adornment is a wide one, we may classify them as a part of it under the name of fulling.
Y. Soc. Good.
Str. And, again, carding and spinning and all the processes concerned with the actual fabrication of the clothing under consideration, form collectively one art familiar to every one—the art of wool-working.
Y. Soc. Of course.
Str. And wool-working comprises two divisions, and each of these is a part of two arts at once.
Y. Soc. How is that?
Str. Carding, and one half of the use of the weaver’s rod, Footnote 1The weaver’s rod (for the Greeks appear to have used a rod, not a comb) was used to drive the threads of the woof close together, and also to keep the threads of the warp and woof distinct (cf. Plat. Crat. 388a). All the processes here described, familiar as they were to the ancients, have been done away with, or, at least, greatly modified, in Europe and America by the modern methods of industry. and the other crafts which separate things that are joined—all this collectively is a part of the art of wool-working; and in all things we found two great arts, that of composition and that of division.
Y. Soc. Yes.
Str. Now carding and all the other processes just mentioned are parts of the art of division; for the art of division in wool and threads, exercised in one way with the rod and in another with the hands, has all the names just mentioned.
Y. Soc. Yes, certainly.
Str. Then let us again take up something which is at once a part of the arts of composition and of wool-working. Let us put aside all that belongs to division, making two parts of wool-working, by applying the principles of division and of composition.
Y. Soc. Let us make that distinction.
Str. The part which belongs at once to composition and to wool-working, Socrates, you must allow us to divide again, if we are to get a satisfactory concept of the aforesaid art of weaving.
Y. Soc. Then we must divide it.
Str. Yes, we must; and let us call one part of it the art of twisting threads, and the other the art of intertwining them.
Y. Soc. I am not sure I understand. By the art of twisting I think you mean the making of the warp.
Str. Not that only, but also the making of the woof. We shall not find that the woof is made without twisting, shall we?
Y. Soc. No, of course not.
Str. Well, just define warp and woof; perhaps the definition would serve you well at this junction.
Y. Soc. How shall I do it?
Str. In this way: A piece of carded wool, which is lengthened out and is wide, is said to be a lap of wool, is it not?
Y. Soc. Yes.
Str. And if any such lap of wool is twisted with a spindle and made into a hard thread, we call the thread warp, and the art which governs this process is the art of spinning the warp.
Y. Soc. Right.