Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

ANGLING DEFINED BY PLATOINTRODUCTIONPART II" Except to politicians, a decent definition is a help and a delight."Acting on this American dictum I start with two definitions,one of Fishing and Angling, the other of Anghng. The firstwe owe to that past master of the art, Plato. Whether it comewithin the category of " delight or help," or whether he canendorse the verdict of Theaetetus as to its " satisfactory conclusion,"each reader must decide.Plato, using the method of elimination and incidentallymore than three pages of print, eventually arrives at the follow-iing definition of Fishing and Angling " : Then, now you andI have come to an understanding, not only about the nameof the Angler's art,One half of all Art was acquisitive :but about the definition of the thing itself.one half of the acquisitiveArt was conquest or taking by force : half of this again washunting, and half of hunting was hunting animals : of thisagain the under half was fishing, and half of fishing wasstriking : a part of striking was fishing with a barb, and onehalf of this again (being the kind which strikes with a hook anddraws the fish from below upwards) is the Art we have beenseeking, and which from the nature of the operation is denotedAngling or drawing up."Thecetetus :" The result has been quite satisfactorilybrought out."In search of a more helpful definition I turn to the EnglishDictionaries. The N.E.D. {New English Dictionary, Oxford)^ Jowett" s Translation, vol. iv. p. 343. The whole passage, which is toolong for quotation, is fairly typical of Platonic methods.45