Seite - 801 - in The Complete Plato

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 801