Sophist

Str. The kind that is characterized by the opposite sort of blow, which is practised with a hook and strikes, not any chance part of the body of the fishes, as tridents do, but only the head and mouth of the fish caught, and proceeds from below upwards, being pulled up by twigs and rods. By what name, Theaetetus, shall we say this ought to be called?

Theaet. I think our search is now ended and we have found the very thing we set before us a while ago as necessary to find.

Str. Now, then, you and I are not only agreed about the name of angling, but we have acquired also a satisfactory definition of the thing itself. For of art as a whole, half was acquisitive, and of the acquisitive, half was coercive, and of the coercive, half was hunting, and of hunting, half was animal hunting, and of animal hunting, half was water hunting, and, taken as a whole, of water hunting the lower part was fishing, and of fishing, half was striking, and of striking, half was barb-hunting, and of this the part in which the blow is pulled from below upwards at an angle [*](Plato’s etymology—ἀσπαλιευτική from ἀνασπᾶσθαι— is hardly less absurd than that suggested in the translation. The words at an angle are inserted merely to give a reason In English for the words which follow them.) has a name in the very likeness of the act and is called angling, which was the object of our present search.

Theaet. That at all events has been made perfectly clear.

Str. Come, then, let us use this as a pattern and try to find out what a sophist is.

Theaet. By all means.

Str. Well, then, the first question we asked was whether we must assume that the angler was just a man or was a man with an art.

Theaet. Yes.

Str. Now take this man of ours, Theaetetus. Shall we assume that he is just a man, or by all means really a man of wisdom?

Theaet. Certainly not just a man; for I catch your meaning that he is very far from being wise, although his name implies wisdom.

Str. But we must, it seems, assume that he has an art of some kind.

Theaet. Well, then, what in the world is this art that he has?

Str. Good gracious! Have we failed to notice that the man is akin to the other man?

Theaet. Who is akin to whom?

Str. The angler to the sophist.

Theaet. How so?

Str. They both seem clearly to me to be a sort of hunters.

Theaet. What is the hunting of the second? We have spoken about the first.

Str. We just now divided hunting as a whole into two classes, and made one division that of swimming creatures and the other that of land-hunting.

Theaet. Yes.

Str. And the one we discussed, so far as the swimming creatures that live in the water are concerned; but we left the land-hunting undivided, merely remarking that it has many forms.