Dialogues of Plato - MobileReference [889]
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.
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The End
Statesman
By Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
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Plato Biography
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Theodorus, Socrates, The Eleatic Stranger, The Younger Socrates.
SOCRATES: I owe you many thanks, indeed, Theodorus, for the acquaintance both of Theaetetus and of the Stranger.
THEODORUS: And in a little while, Socrates, you will owe me three times as many, when they have completed for you the delineation of the Statesman and of the Philosopher, as well as of the Sophist.
SOCRATES: Sophist, statesman, philosopher! O my dear Theodorus, do my ears truly witness that this is the estimate formed of them by the great calculator and geometrician?
THEODORUS: What do you mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I mean that you rate them all at the same value, whereas they are really separated by an interval, which no geometrical ratio can express.
THEODORUS: By Ammon, the god of Cyrene, Socrates, that is a very fair hit; and shows that you have not forgotten your geometry. I will retaliate on you at some other time, but I must now ask the Stranger, who will not, I hope, tire of his goodness to us, to proceed either with the Statesman or with the Philosopher, whichever he prefers.
STRANGER: That is my duty, Theodorus; having begun I must go on, and not leave the work unfinished. But what shall be done with Theaetetus?
THEODORUS: In what respect?
STRANGER: Shall we relieve him, and take his companion, the Young Socrates, instead of him? What do you advise?
THEODORUS: Yes, give the other a turn, as you propose. The young always do better when they have intervals of rest.
SOCRATES: I think, Stranger, that both of them may be said to be in some way related to me; for the one, as you affirm, has the cut of my ugly face (compare Theaet.), the other is called by my name. And we should always be on the look-out to recognize a kinsman by the style of his conversation. I myself was discoursing with Theaetetus yesterday, and I have just been listening to his