art never considers whether the
benefit to be derived from the purge is greater or less than that to be
derived from the sponge, and has not more interest in the one than in
the other; her endeavour is to know what is and is not kindred in all
arts, with a view to the acquisition of intelligence; and having this
in view, she honours them all alike, and when she makes comparisons, she
counts one of them not a whit more ridiculous than another; nor does she
esteem him who adduces as his example of hunting, the general's art, at
all more decorous than another who cites that of the vermin-destroyer,
but only as the greater pretender of the two. And as to your question
concerning the name which was to comprehend all these arts of
purification, whether of animate or inanimate bodies, the art of
dialectic is in no wise particular about fine words, if she may be only
allowed to have a general name for all other purifications, binding them
up together and separating them off from the purification of the soul
or intellect. For this is the purification at which she wants to arrive,
and this we should understand to be her aim.

THEAETETUS: Yes, I understand; and I agree that there are two sorts of
purification, and that one of them is concerned with the soul, and that
there is another which is concerned with the body.

STRANGER: Excellent; and now listen to what I am going to say, and try
to divide further the first of the two.

THEAETETUS: Whatever line of division you suggest, I will endeavour to
assist you.

STRANGER: Do we admit that virtue is distinct from vice in the soul?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And purification was to leave the good and to cast out
whatever is bad?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Then any taking away of evil from the soul may be properly
called purification?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And in the soul there are two kinds of evil.

THEAETETUS: What are they?

STRANGER: The one may be compared to disease in the body, the other to
deformity.

THEAETETUS: I do not understand.

STRANGER: Perhaps you have never reflected that disease and discord are
the same.

THEAETETUS: To this, again, I know not what I should reply.

STRANGER: Do you not conceive discord to be a dissolution of kindred
elements, originating in some disagreement?

THEAETETUS: Just that.

STRANGER: And is deformity anything but the want of measure, which is
always unsightly?

THEAETETUS: Exactly.

STRANGER: