Sophist
of either, but only a sort of opinion, do their best to show that this
opinion is really entertained by them, by expressing it, as far as they
can, in word and deed?
THEAETETUS: Yes, that is very common.
STRANGER: And do they always fail in their attempt to be thought just,
when they are not? Or is not the very opposite true?
THEAETETUS: The very opposite.
STRANGER: Such a one, then, should be described as an imitator--to be
distinguished from the other, as he who is ignorant is distinguished
from him who knows?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Can we find a suitable name for each of them? This is clearly
not an easy task; for among the ancients there was some confusion
of ideas, which prevented them from attempting to divide genera into
species; wherefore there is no great abundance of names. Yet, for the
sake of distinctness, I will make bold to call the imitation which
coexists with opinion, the imitation of appearance--that which coexists
with science, a scientific or learned imitation.
THEAETETUS: Granted.
STRANGER: The former is our present concern, for the Sophist was classed
with imitators indeed, but not among those who have knowledge.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: Let us, then, examine our imitator of appearance, and see
whether he is sound, like a piece of iron, or whether there is still
some crack in him.
THEAETETUS: Let us examine him.
STRANGER: Indeed there is a very considerable crack; for if you look,
you find that one of the two classes of imitators is a simple creature,
who thinks that he knows that which he only fancies; the other sort has
knocked about among arguments, until he suspects and fears that he is
ignorant of that which to the many he pretends to know.
THEAETETUS: There are certainly the two kinds which you describe.
STRANGER: Shall we regard one as the simple imitator--the other as the
dissembling or ironical imitator?
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: And shall we further speak of this latter class as having one
or two divisions?
THEAETETUS: Answer yourself.
STRANGER: Upon consideration, then, there appear to me to be two; there
is the dissembler, who harangues a multitude in public in a long speech,
and the dissembler, who in private and in short speeches compels the
person who is conversing with him to contradict himself.
THEAETETUS: What you say is most true.
STRANGER: And who is the maker of the longer speeches? Is he the
statesman or the popular orator?
THEAETETUS: The latter.
STRANGER: And what shall we call the other? Is he the philosopher or the
Sophist?
THEAETETUS: The philosopher he cannot be, for upon our view he is
ignorant; but since he is an imitator of the wise he will have a name
which is formed by an adaptation of the word sophos. What shall we name
him? I am pretty sure that I cannot be mistaken in terming him the true
and very Sophist.
STRANGER: Shall we bind up his name as we did before, making a chain
from one end of his genealogy to the other?
THEAETETUS: By all means.
STRANGER: He, then, who traces the pedigree of his art as follows--who,
belonging to the conscious or dissembling section of the art of causing
self-contradiction, is an imitator of appearance, and is separated from
the class of phantastic which is a branch of image-making into that
further division of creation, the juggling of words, a creation human,
and not divine--any one who affirms the real Sophist to be of this blood
and lineage will say the very truth.
THEAETETUS: Undoubtedly.