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Str. Very well; you will follow your own devices about that as the discussion proceeds; but now you and I must investigate in common, beginning first, as it seems to me, with the sophist, and must search out and make plain by argument what he is. For as yet you and I have nothing in common about him but the name; but as to the thing to which we give the name, we may perhaps each have a conception of it in our own minds; however, we ought always in every instance to come to agreement about the thing itself by argument rather than about the mere name without argument. But the tribe which we now intend to search for, the sophist, is not the easiest thing in the world to catch and define, and everyone has agreed long ago that if investigations of great matters are to be properly worked out we ought to practice them on small and easier matters before attacking the very greatest. So now, Theaetetus, this is my advice to ourselves, since we think the family of sophists is troublesome and hard to catch, that we first practise the method of hunting in something easier, unless you perhaps have some simpler way to suggest.
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Theaet. I have not.
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Str. Then shall we take some lesser thing and try to use it as a pattern for the greater?
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Theaet. Yes.
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Str. Well, then, what example can we set before us which is well known and small, but no less capable of definition than any of the greater things? Say an angler; is he not known to all and unworthy of any great interest?
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Theaet. Yes.
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Str. But I hope he offers us a method and is capable of a definition not unsuitable to our purpose.
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Theaet. That would be good.
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Str. Come now; let us begin with him in this way: Tell me, shall we say that he is a man with an art, or one without an art, but having some other power?
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Theaet. Certainly not one without an art.
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Str. But of all arts there are, speaking generally, two kinds?
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Theaet. How so?
