Sophist

Theaet. Of what nature?

Str. We agreed that fighting was a division of acquisitive art.

Theaet. Yes, we did.

Str. Then it is quite fitting to divide it into two parts.

Theaet. Tell what the parts are.

Str. Let us call one part of it the competitive and the other the pugnacious.

Theaet. Agreed.

Str. Then it is reasonable and fitting to give to that part of the pugnacious which consists of bodily contests some such name as violent.

Theaet. Yes.

Str. And what other name than controversy shall we give to the contests of words?

Theaet. No other.

Str. But controversy must be divided into two kinds.

Theaet. How?

Str. Whenever long speeches are opposed by long speeches on questions of justice and injustice in public, that is forensic controversy.

Theaet. Yes.

Str. But that which is carried on among private persons and is cut up into little bits by means of questions and their answers, we are accustomed to call argumentation, are we not?

Theaet. We are.

Str. And that part of argumentation which deals with business contracts, in which there is controversy, to be sure, but it is carried on informally and without rules of art—all that must be considered a distinct class, now that our argument has recognized it as different from the rest, but it received no name from our predecessors, nor does it now deserve to receive one from us.

Theaet. True; for the divisions into which it falls are too small and too miscellaneous.

Str. But that which possesses rules of art and carries on controversy about abstract justice and injustice and the rest in general terms, we are accustomed to call disputation, are we not?

Theaet. Certainly.

Str. Well, of disputation, one sort wastes money, the other makes money.

Theaet. Certainly.

Str. Then let us try to tell the name by which we must call each of these.

Theaet. Yes, we must do so.

Str. Presumably the kind which causes a man to neglect his own affairs for the pleasure of engaging in it, but the style of which causes no pleasure to most of his hearers, is, in my opinion, called by no other name than garrulity.

Theaet. Yes, that is about what it is called.

Str. Then the opposite of this, the kind which makes money from private disputes—try now, for it is your turn, to give its name.

Theaet. What other answer could one give without making a mistake, than that now again for the fourth time that wonderful being whom we have so long been pursuing has turned up—the sophist!