have a preference for
some one else.

STRANGER: I feel ashamed, Socrates, being a new-comer into your society,
instead of talking a little and hearing others talk, to be spinning out
a long soliloquy or address, as if I wanted to show off. For the true
answer will certainly be a very long one, a great deal longer than might
be expected from such a short and simple question. At the same time,
I fear that I may seem rude and ungracious if I refuse your courteous
request, especially after what you have said. For I certainly cannot
object to your proposal, that Theaetetus should respond, having already
conversed with him myself, and being recommended by you to take him.

THEAETETUS: But are you sure, Stranger, that this will be quite so
acceptable to the rest of the company as Socrates imagines?

STRANGER: You hear them applauding, Theaetetus; after that, there is
nothing more to be said. Well then, I am to argue with you, and if you
tire of the argument, you may complain of your friends and not of me.

THEAETETUS: I do not think that I shall tire, and if I do, I shall get
my friend here, young Socrates, the namesake of the elder Socrates, to
help; he is about my own age, and my partner at the gymnasium, and is
constantly accustomed to work with me.

STRANGER: Very good; you can decide about that for yourself as we
proceed. Meanwhile you and I will begin together and enquire into the
nature of the Sophist, first of the three: I should like you to make out
what he is and bring him to light in a discussion; for at present we are
only agreed about the name, but of the thing to which we both apply the
name possibly you have one notion and I another; whereas we ought
always to come to an understanding about the thing itself in terms of a
definition, and not merely about the name minus the definition. Now the
tribe of Sophists which we are investigating is not easily caught or
defined; and the world has long ago agreed, that if great subjects are
to be adequately treated, they must be studied in the lesser and easier
instances of them before we proceed to the greatest of all. And as I
know that the tribe of Sophists is troublesome and hard to be caught, I
should recommend that we practise beforehand the method which is to be
applied to him on some simple and smaller thing, unless you can suggest
a better way.

THEAETETUS: Indeed I cannot.

STRANGER: Then suppose that we work out some lesser example which will
be a patter