Chapter 7 focusses on Statesman 287b4-290e9 and treats the Eleatic Visitor’s claims that dichotomous division is not always necessary or possible (287b10-c5), and that applying the paradigm of weaving to the city will reveal the nature of statecraft (287a7-b2). This chapter attempts to make good these claims by showing that the Visitor’s way of proceeding is substantially informative in a way that dichotomous division would not be. Following the weaving paradigm’s non-dichotomous division enables the Visitor to lay bare the functional parts of the city, and to show that what is necessary for political life ought to be organized for the sake of political life – and, conversely, that it is the business of statecraft so to organize the necessary conditions for its own existence. Finally, the hierarchy of causes of the city lays the groundwork for determining which polis-constituting activities can lay best claim to care for the city in the way distinctive of statecraft.