Sophist – Plato
STRANGER: Then we shall be right in calling vice THEAETETUS: True.
a discord and disease of the soul?
STRANGER: Then we are to regard an unintelli-THEAETETUS: Most true.
gent soul as deformed and devoid of symmetry?
STRANGER: And when things having motion, THEAETETUS: Very true.
and aiming at an appointed mark, continually miss their aim and glance aside, shall we say STRANGER: Then there are these two kinds of that this is the effect of symmetry among them, evil in the soul—the one which is generally called or of the want of symmetry?
vice, and is obviously a disease of the soul...
THEAETETUS: Clearly of the want of symmetry.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: But surely we know that no soul is STRANGER: And there is the other, which they voluntarily ignorant of anything?
call ignorance, and which, because existing only in the soul, they will not allow to be vice.
THEAETETUS: Certainly not.
THEAETETUS: I certainly admit what I at first STRANGER: And what is ignorance but the ab-disputed—that there are two kinds of vice in the erration of a mind which is bent on truth, and in soul, and that we ought to consider cowardice, which the process of understanding is perverted?
intemperance, and injustice to be alike forms of 94
Sophist – Plato
disease in the soul, and ignorance, of which there STRANGER: Again, of the various kinds of igno-are all sorts of varieties, to be deformity.
rance, may not instruction be rightly said to be the remedy?
STRANGER: And in the case of the body are there not two arts which have to do with the two bodily THEAETETUS: True.
states?
STRANGER: And of the art of instruction, shall THEAETETUS: What are they?
we say that there is one or many kinds? At any rate there are two principal ones. Think.
STRANGER: There is gymnastic, which has to do with deformity, and medicine, which has to THEAETETUS: I will.
do with disease.
STRANGER: I believe that I can see how we shall THEAETETUS: True.
soonest arrive at the answer to this question.
STRANGER: And where there is insolence and THEAETETUS: How?
injustice and cowardice, is not chastisement the art which is most required?
STRANGER: If we can discover a line which divides ignorance into two halves. For a division THEAETETUS: That certainly appears to be the of ignorance into two parts will certainly imply opinion of mankind.
that the art of instruction is also twofold, answer-95
Sophist – Plato
ing to the two divisions of ignorance.
THEAETETUS: True.
THEAETETUS: Well, and do you see what you STRANGER: What name, then, shall be given to are looking for?
the sort of instruction which gets rid of this?
STRANGER: I do seem to myself to see one very THEAETETUS: The instruction which you mean, large and bad sort of ignorance which is quite Stranger, is, I should imagine, not the teaching separate, and may be weighed in the scale of handicraft arts, but what, thanks to us, has against all other sorts of ignorance put together.
been termed education in this part the world.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: Yes, Theaetetus, and by nearly all Hellenes. But we have still to consider whether STRANGER: When a person supposes that he education admits of any further division.
knows, and does not know; this appears to be the great source of all the errors of the intellect.
THEAETETUS: We have.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: I think that there is a point at which such a division is possible.
STRANGER: And this, if I am not mistaken, is the kind of ignorance which specially earns the THEAETETUS: Where?
title of stupidity.