sophist   

Str. What name, then, shall be given to the sort of instruction
which gets rid of this?
Theaet. The instruction which you mean, Stranger, is, I should
imagine, not the teaching of handicraft arts, but what, thanks to
us, has been termed education in this part the world.
Str. Yes, Theaetetus, and by nearly all Hellenes. But we have
still to consider whether education admits of any further division.
Theaet. We have.
Str. I think that there is a point at which such a division is
possible.
Theaet. Where?
Str. Of education, one method appears to be rougher, and another
smoother.
Theaet. How are we to distinguish the two?
Str. There is the time-honoured mode which our fathers commonly
practised towards their sons, and which is still adopted by
many-either of roughly reproving their errors, or of gently advising
them; which varieties may be correctly included under the
general term
of admonition.
Theaet. True.
Str. But whereas some appear to have arrived at the conclusion
that all ignorance is involuntary, and that no one who thinks
himself wise is willing to learn any of those things in which he is
conscious of his own cleverness, and that the admonitory sort of
instruction gives much trouble and does little good-
Theaet. There they are quite right.
Str. Accordingly, they set to work to eradicate the spirit of
conceit in another way.
Theaet. In what way?
Str. They cross-examine a man's words, when he thinks that he is
saying something and is really saying nothing, and easily convict
him of inconsistencies in his opinions; these they then
collect by the
dialectical process, and placing them side by side, show that they
contradict one another about the same things, in relation to the
same things, and in the same respect. He, seeing this, is angry with
himself, and grows gentle towards others, and thus is entirely
delivered from great prejudices and harsh notions, in a way which is
most amusing to the hearer, and produces the most lasting good
effect on the person who is the subject of the operation. For as the
physician considers that the body will receive no benefit from
taking food until the internal obstacles have been removed, so the
purifier of the soul is conscious that his patient will receive no
benefit from the application of knowledge until he is refuted, and
from refutation learns modesty; he must be purged of his prejudices
first and made to think that he knows only what he knows,
and no more.
Theaet. That is certainly the best and wisest state of mind.
Str. For all these reasons, Theaetetus, we must admit that
refutation is the greatest and chiefest of purifications, and he who
has not been refuted, though he be the Great King himself, is in an
awful state of impurity; he is uninstructed and deformed in those
things in which he who would be truly blessed ought to be fairest
and purest.
Theaet. Very true.
Str. And who are the ministers of this art?
I am afraid to say the Sophists.
Theaet. Why?
Str. Lest we should assign to them too high a prerogative.
Theaet. Yet the Sophist has a certain likeness to our minister of
purification.
Str. Yes, the same sort of likeness which a wolf, who is the
fiercest of animals, has to a dog, who is the gentlest. But he who