Young Socrates: Clearly of the unmixed.
Stranger: I suppose that we must divide this again as before.
Young Socrates: We must.
Stranger: Every tame and herding animal has now been split up, with the exception of two species; for I hardly think that dogs should be reckoned among gregarious animals.
Young Socrates: Certainly not; but how shall we divide the two remaining species?
Stranger: There is a measure of difference which may be appropriately employed by you and Theaetetus, who are students of geometry.
Young Socrates: What is that?
Stranger: The diameter; and, again, the diameter of a diameter.
Young Socrates: What do you mean?
Stranger: How does man walk, but as a diameter whose power is two feet?
Young Socrates: Just so.
Stranger: And the power of the remaining kind, being the power of twice two feet, may be said to be the diameter of our diameter.
Young Socrates: Certainly; and now I think that I pretty nearly understand you.
Stranger: In these divisions, Socrates, I descry what would make another famous jest.
Young Socrates: What is it?
Stranger: Human beings have come out in the same class with the freest and airiest of creation, and have been running a race with them.
Young Socrates: I remark that very singular coincidence.
Stranger: And would you not expect the slowest to arrive last?
Young Socrates: Indeed I should.
Stranger: And there is a still more ridiculous consequence, that the king is found running about with the herd and in close competition with the bird-catcher, who of all mankind is most of an adept at the airy life.
Young Socrates: Certainly.
Stranger: Then here, Socrates, is still clearer evidence of the truth of what was said in the enquiry about the Sophist?
Young Socrates: What?
Stranger: That the dialectical method is no respecter of persons, and does not set the great above the small, but always arrives in her own way at the truest result.
Young Socrates: Clearly.