SOPHIST by Plato - Complete text

Page 77 (Last page)

Str. And shall we further speak of this latter class as having one or two divisions?

Theaet. Answer yourself.

Str. 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.

Theaet. What you say is most true.

Str. And who is the maker of the longer speeches? Is he the statesman or the popular orator?

Theaet. The latter.

Str. And what shall we call the other? Is he the philosopher or the Sophist?

Theaet. The philosopher he cannot be, for upon our view he is ignorant; but since he is an imitator of the wise he will have a name which is formed by an adaptation of the word sothos. What shall we name him? I am pretty sure that I cannot be mistaken in terming him the true and very Sophist.

Str. Shall we bind up his name as we did before, making a chain from one end of his genealogy to the other?

Theaet. By all means.

Str. He, then, who traces the pedigree of his art as follows - who, belonging to the conscious or dissembling section of the art of causing self - contradiction, is an imitator of appearance, and is separated from the class of phantastic which is a branch of image - making into that further division of creation, the juggling of words, a creation human, and not divine - any one who affirms the real Sophist to be of this blood and lineage will say the very truth.

Theaet. Undoubtedly.

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