Page - 815 - in The Complete Plato

(Compare Meno.) YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean? STRANGER: How does man walk, but as a diameter whose power is two feet? YOUNG SOCRATES: Just so. STRANGER: And the power of the remaining kind, being the power of twice two feet, may be said to be the diameter of our diameter. YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly; and now I think that I pretty nearly understand you. STRANGER: In these divisions, Socrates, I descry what would make another famous jest. YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it? STRANGER: Human beings have come out in the same class with the freest and airiest of creation, and have been running a race with them. YOUNG SOCRATES: I remark that very singular coincidence. STRANGER: And would you not expect the slowest to arrive last? YOUNG SOCRATES: Indeed I should. STRANGER: And there is a still more ridiculous consequence, that the king is found running about with the herd and in close competition with the bird-catcher, who of all mankind is most of an adept at the airy life. (Plato is here introducing a new suddivision, i.e. that of bipeds into men and birds. Others however refer the passage to the division into quadrupeds and bipeds, making pigs compete with human beings and the pig- driver with the king. According to this explanation we must translate the words above, ‘freest and airiest of creation,’ ‘worthiest and laziest of creation.’) YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. STRANGER: Then here, Socrates, is still clearer evidence of the truth of what was said in the enquiry about the Sophist? (Compare Sophist.) YOUNG SOCRATES: What? STRANGER: That the dialectical method is no respecter of persons, and does not set the great above the small, but always arrives in her own way at the truest result. YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly. STRANGER: And now, I will not wait for you to ask the, but will of my 815