the other to the herd that has no horns.

YOUNG SOCRATES: All that you say has been abundantly proved, and may
therefore be assumed.

STRANGER: The king is clearly the shepherd of a polled herd, who have no
horns.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That is evident.

STRANGER: Shall we break up this hornless herd into sections, and
endeavour to assign to him what is his?

YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.

STRANGER: Shall we distinguish them by their having or not having cloven
feet, or by their mixing or not mixing the breed? You know what I mean.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What?

STRANGER: I mean that horses and asses naturally breed from one another.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: But the remainder of the hornless herd of tame animals will
not mix the breed.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: And of which has the Statesman charge,--of the mixed or of the
unmixed race?

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. (Compare
Meno.)

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 man