Page - 736 - in The Complete Plato

STRANGER: Very good; you can decide about that for yourself as we proceed. Meanwhile you and I will begin together and enquire into the nature of the Sophist, first of the three: I should like you to make out what he is and bring him to light in a discussion; for at present we are only agreed about the name, but of the thing to which we both apply the name possibly you have one notion and I another; whereas we ought always to come to an understanding about the thing itself in terms of a definition, and not merely about the name minus the definition. Now the tribe of Sophists which we are investigating is not easily caught or defined; and the world has long ago agreed, that if great subjects are to be adequately treated, they must be studied in the lesser and easier instances of them before we proceed to the greatest of all. And as I know that the tribe of Sophists is troublesome and hard to be caught, I should recommend that we practise beforehand the method which is to be applied to him on some simple and smaller thing, unless you can suggest a better way. THEAETETUS: Indeed I cannot. STRANGER: Then suppose that we work out some lesser example which will be a pattern of the greater? THEAETETUS: Good. STRANGER: What is there which is well known and not great, and is yet as susceptible of definition as any larger thing? Shall I say an angler? He is familiar to all of us, and not a very interesting or important person. THEAETETUS: He is not. STRANGER: Yet I suspect that he will furnish us with the sort of definition and line of enquiry which we want. THEAETETUS: Very good. STRANGER: Let us begin by asking whether he is a man having art or not having art, but some other power. THEAETETUS: He is clearly a man of art. STRANGER: And of arts there are two kinds? THEAETETUS: What are they? STRANGER: There is agriculture, and the tending of mortal creatures, and the art of constructing or moulding vessels, and there is the art of imitation— all these may be appropriately called by a single name. THEAETETUS: What do you mean? And what is the name? STRANGER: He who brings into existence something that did not exist 736