Stranger
Str. Certainly they do, Theaetetus. However, the method of argument is neither more nor less concerned with the art of medicine than with that of sponging, but is indifferent if the one benefits us little, the other greatly by its purifying. It endeavors to understand what is related and what is not related in all arts, for the purpose of acquiring intelligence; and therefore it honors them all equally and does not in making comparisons think one more ridiculous than another, and does not consider him who employs, as his example of hunting, the art of generalship, any more dignified than him who employs the art of louse-catching, but only, for the most part, as more pretentious. And now as to your question, what name we shall give to all the activities whose function it is to purify the body, whether animate or inanimate, it will not matter at all to our method what name sounds finest; it cares only to unite under one name all purifications of everything else and to keep them separate from the purification of the soul. For it has in our present discussion been trying to separate this purification definitely from the rest, if we understand its desire.
