Sophist
but you must try and tell me the name of the other.
THEAETETUS: He must be the Sophist, whom we are seeking; no other name
can possibly be right.
STRANGER: No other; and so this trader in virtue again turns out to
be our friend the Sophist, whose art may now be traced from the art of
acquisition through exchange, trade, merchandise, to a merchandise of
the soul which is concerned with speech and the knowledge of virtue.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: And there may be a third reappearance of him;--for he may
have settled down in a city, and may fabricate as well as buy these same
wares, intending to live by selling them, and he would still be called a
Sophist?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: Then that part of the acquisitive art which exchanges, and of
exchange which either sells a man's own productions or retails those
of others, as the case may be, and in either way sells the knowledge of
virtue, you would again term Sophistry?
THEAETETUS: I must, if I am to keep pace with the argument.
STRANGER: Let us consider once more whether there may not be yet another
aspect of sophistry.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: In the acquisitive there was a subdivision of the combative or
fighting art.
THEAETETUS: There was.
STRANGER: Perhaps we had better divide it.
THEAETETUS: What shall be the divisions?
STRANGER: There shall be one division of the competitive, and another of
the pugnacious.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: That part of the pugnacious which is a contest of bodily
strength may be properly called by some such name as violent.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And when the war is one of words, it may be termed
controversy?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And controversy may be of two kinds.
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: When long speeches are answered by long speeches, and there
is public discussion about the just and unjust, that is forensic
controversy.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And there is a private sort of controversy, which is cut up
into questions and answers, and this is commonly called disputation?
THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the name.
STRANGER: And of disputation, that sort which is only a discussion about
contracts, and is carried on at random, and without rules of art, is
recognized by the reasoning faculty to be a distinct class, but has
hitherto had no distinctive name, and does not deserve to receive one
from us.
THEAETETUS: No; for the different sorts of it are too minute and
heterogeneous.
STRANGER: But that which proceeds by rules of art to dispute about
justice and injustice in their own nature, and about things in general,
we have been accustomed to call argumentation (Eristic)?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And of argumentation, one sort wastes money, and the other
makes money.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: Suppose we try and give to each of these two classes a name.
THEAETETUS: Let us do so.
STRANGER: I should say that the habit which leads a man to neglect his
own affairs for the pleasure of conversation, of which the style is
far from being agreeable to the majority of his hearers, may be fairly
termed loquacity: such is my opinion.
THEAETETUS: That is the common name for it.
STRANGER: But now who the other is, who makes money out of private
disputation, it is your turn to say.
THEAETETUS: There is only one true answer: he is the wonderful Sophist,
of whom we are in pursuit, and who reappears again for the fourth time.
STRANGER: Yes, and with a fresh pedigree, for he is the money-making
species of the Eristic, disputatious, controversial, pugnacious,
combative, acquisitive family, as the argument has already proven.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: How true was the observation that he was a many-sided animal,
and not to be caught with one hand, as they say!
THEAETETUS: Then you must catch him with two.
STRANGER: Yes, we must, if we can. And therefore let us try another
track in our pursuit of him: You are aware that there are certain menial
occupations which have names among servants?
THEAETETUS: Yes, there are many such; which of them do you mean?
STRANGER: I mean such as sifting, straining, winnowing, threshing.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And besides these there are a great many more, such as
carding, spinning, adjusting the warp and the woof; and thousands of
similar expressions are used in the arts.
THEAETETUS: Of what are they to be patterns, and what are we going to do
with them all?
STRANGER: I think that in all of these there is implied a notion of
division.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: Then if, as I was saying, there is one art which includes all
of them, ought not that art to have one name?
THEAETETUS: And what is the name of the art?
STRANGER: The art of discerning or discriminating.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: Think whether you cannot divide this.
THEAETETUS: I should have to think a long while.
STRANGER: In all the previously named processes either like has been
separated from like or the better from the worse.
THEAETETUS: I see now what you mean.
STRANGER: There is no name for the first kind of separation; of the
second, which throws away the worse and preserves the better, I do know
a name.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: Every discernment or discrimination of that kind, as I have
observed, is called a purification.
THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the usual expression.
STRANGER: And any one may see that purification is of two kinds.
THEAETETUS: Perhaps so, if he were allowed time to think; but I do not
see at this moment.
STRANGER: There are many purifications of bodies which may with
propriety be comprehended under a single name.
THEAETETUS: What are they, and what is their name?
STRANGER: There is the purification of living bodies in their inward and
in their outward parts, of which the former is duly effected by medicine
and gymnastic, the latter by the not very dignified art of the bath-man;
and there is the purification of inanimate substances--to this the arts
of fulling and of furbishing in general attend in a number of minute
particulars, having a variety of names which are thought ridiculous.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: There can be no doubt that they are thought ridiculous,
Theaetetus; but then the dialectical art never considers whether the
benefit to be derived from the purge is greater or less than that to be
derived from the sponge, and has not more interest in the one than in
the other; her endeavour is to know what is and is not kindred in all
arts, with a view to the acquisition of intelligence; and having this
in view, she honours them all alike, and when she makes comparisons, she
counts one of them not a whit more ridiculous than another; nor does she
esteem him who adduces as his example of hunting, the general's art, at
all more decorous than another who cites that of the vermin-destroyer,
but only as the greater pretender of the two. And as to your question
concerning the name which was to comprehend all these arts of
purification, whether of animate or inanimate bodies, the art of
dialectic is in no wise particular about fine words, if she may be only
allowed to have a general name for all other purifications, binding them
up together and separating them off from the purification of the soul
or intellect. For this is the purification at which she wants to arrive,
and this we should understand to be her aim.
THEAETETUS: Yes, I understand; and I agree that there are two sorts of
purification, and that one of them is concerned with the soul, and that
there is another which is concerned with the body.
STRANGER: Excellent; and now listen to what I am going to say, and try
to divide further the first of the two.
THEAETETUS: Whatever line of division you suggest, I will endeavour to
assist you.
STRANGER: Do we admit that virtue is distinct from vice in the soul?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And purification was to leave the good and to cast out
whatever is bad?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Then any taking away of evil from the soul may be properly
called purification?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And in the soul there are two kinds of evil.
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: The one may be compared to disease in the body, the other to
deformity.
THEAETETUS: I do not understand.
STRANGER: Perhaps you have never reflected that disease and discord are
the same.
THEAETETUS: To this, again, I know not what I should reply.
STRANGER: Do you not conceive discord to be a dissolution of kindred
elements, originating in some disagreement?
THEAETETUS: Just that.
STRANGER: And is deformity anything but the want of measure, which is
always unsightly?
THEAETETUS: Exactly.
STRANGER: And do we not see that opinion is opposed to desire, pleasure
to anger, reason to pain, and that all these elements are opposed to one
another in the souls of bad men?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And yet they must all be akin?
THEAETETUS: Of course.
STRANGER: Then we shall be right in calling vice a discord and disease
of the soul?
THEAETETUS: Most true.
STRANGER: And when things having motion, and aiming at an appointed
mark, continually miss their aim and glance aside, shall we say that
this is the effect of symmetry among them, or of the want of symmetry?
THEAETETUS: Clearly of the want of symmetry.
STRANGER: But surely we know that no soul is voluntarily ignorant of
anything?
THEAETETUS: Certainly not.
STRANGER: And what is ignorance but the aberration of a mind which is
bent on truth, and in which the process of understanding is perverted?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Then we are to regard an unintelligent soul as deformed and
devoid of symmetry?
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: Then there are these two kinds of evil in the soul--the
one which is generally called vice, and is obviously a disease of the
soul...
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And there is the other, which they call ignorance, and which,
because existing only in the soul, they will not allow to be vice.
THEAETETUS: I certainly admit what I at first disputed--that there are
two kinds of vice in the soul, and that we ought to consider cowardice,
intemperance, and injustice to be alike forms of disease in the
soul, and ignorance, of which there are all sorts of varieties, to be
deformity.
STRANGER: And in the case of the body are there not two arts which have
to do with the two bodily states?
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: There is gymnastic, which has to do with deformity, and
medicine, which has to do with disease.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And where there is insolence and injustice and cowardice, is
not chastisement the art which is most required?
THEAETETUS: That certainly appears to be the opinion of mankind.
STRANGER: Again, of the various kinds of ignorance, may not instruction
be rightly said to be the remedy?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And of the art of instruction, shall we say that there is one
or many kinds? At any rate there are two principal ones. Think.
THEAETETUS: I will.
STRANGER: I believe that I can see how we shall soonest arrive at the
answer to this question.
THEAETETUS: How?
STRANGER: If we can discover a line which divides ignorance into two
halves. For a division of ignorance into two parts will certainly
imply that the art of instruction is also twofold, answering to the two
divisions of ignorance.
THEAETETUS: Well, and do you see what you are looking for?
STRANGER: I do seem to myself to see one very large and bad sort of
ignorance which is quite separate, and may be weighed in the scale
against all other sorts of ignorance put together.
THEAETETUS: What is it?