Sophist – Plato
THEAETETUS: Yes, there are many such; which STRANGER: Then if, as I was saying, there is of them do you mean?
one art which includes all of them, ought not that art to have one name?
STRANGER: I mean such as sifting, straining, winnowing, threshing.
THEAETETUS: And what is the name of the art?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: The art of discerning or discriminating.
STRANGER: And besides these there are a great THEAETETUS: Very good.
many more, such as carding, spinning, adjusting the warp and the woof; and thousands of simi-STRANGER: Think whether you cannot divide this.
lar expressions are used in the arts.
THEAETETUS: I should have to think a long while.
THEAETETUS: Of what are they to be patterns, and what are we going to do with them all?
STRANGER: In all the previously named processes either like has been separated from like STRANGER: I think that in all of these there is or the better from the worse.
implied a notion of division.
THEAETETUS: I see now what you mean.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: There is no name for the first kind 90
Sophist – Plato
of separation; of the second, which throws away THEAETETUS: What are they, and what is their name?
the worse and preserves the better, I do know a name.
STRANGER: There is the purification of living bodies in their inward and in their outward parts, THEAETETUS: What is it?
of which the former is duly effected by medicine and gymnastic, the latter by the not very digni-STRANGER: Every discernment or discrimination fied art of the bath-man; and there is the purifi-of that kind, as I have observed, is called a puri-cation of inanimate substances—to this the arts fication.
of fulling and of furbishing in general attend in a number of minute particulars, having a vari-THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the usual expression.
ety of names which are thought ridiculous.
STRANGER: And any one may see that purifica-THEAETETUS: Very true.
tion is of two kinds.
STRANGER: There can be no doubt that they are THEAETETUS: Perhaps so, if he were allowed thought ridiculous, Theaetetus; but then the dia-time to think; but I do not see at this moment.
lectical art never considers whether the benefit to be derived from the purge is greater or less STRANGER: There are many purifications of than that to be derived from the sponge, and bodies which may with propriety be compre-has not more interest in the one than in the hended under a single name.
other; her endeavour is to know what is and is 91
Sophist – Plato
not kindred in all arts, with a view to the acqui-there are two sorts of purification, and that one sition of intelligence; and having this in view, of them is concerned with the soul, and that she honours them all alike, and when she makes there is another which is concerned with the comparisons, she counts one of them not a whit body.
more ridiculous than another; nor does she es-teem him who adduces as his example of hunt-STRANGER: Excellent; and now listen to what I ing, the general’s art, at all more decorous than am going to say, and try to divide further the another who cites that of the vermin-destroyer, first of the two.
but only as the greater pretender of the two. And as to your question concerning the name which THEAETETUS: Whatever line of division you sug-was to comprehend all these arts of purification, gest, I will endeavour to assist you.
whether of animate or inanimate bodies, the art of dialectic is in no wise particular about fine STRANGER: Do we admit that virtue is distinct words, if she may be only allowed to have a gen-from vice in the soul?
eral name for all other purifications, binding them up together and separating them off from THEAETETUS: Certainly.
the purification of the soul or intellect. For this is the purification at which she wants to arrive, STRANGER: And purification was to leave the and this we should understand to be her aim.
good and to cast out whatever is bad?
THEAETETUS: Yes, I understand; and I agree that THEAETETUS: True.