230–231
Stranger
Str. For all these reasons, Theaetetus, we must assert that cross-questioning is the greatest and most efficacious of all purifications, and that he who is not cross-questioned, even though he be the Great King, has not been purified of the greatest taints, and is therefore uneducated and deformed in those things in which he who is to be truly happy ought to be most pure and beautiful.
Theaetetus
Theaet. Perfectly true.
10
Stranger
Str. Well then, who are those who practise this art? I am afraid to say the sophists.
Theaetetus
Theaet. Why so?
Stranger
Str. Lest we grant them too high a meed of honor.
Theaetetus
Theaet. But the description you have just given is very like someone of that sort.
Stranger
Str. Yes, and a wolf is very like a dog, the wildest like the tamest of animals. But the cautious man must be especially on his guard in the matter of resemblances, for they are very slippery things. However, let us agree that they are the sophists; for I think the strife will not be about petty discriminations when people are sufficiently on their guard.
5
Theaetetus
Theaet. No, probably not.
Stranger
Str. Then let it be agreed that part of the discriminating art is purification, and as part of purification let that which is concerned with the soul be separated off, and as part of this, instruction, and as part of instruction, education; and let us agree that the cross-questioning of empty conceit of wisdom, which has come to light in our present discussion, is nothing else than the true-born art of sophistry.
