YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Then here, Socrates, is still clearer evidence of the truth of
what was said in the enquiry about the Sophist? (Compare 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.

STRANGER: And now, I will not wait for you to ask the, but will of my own
accord take you by the shorter road to the definition of a king.

YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.

STRANGER: I say that we should have begun at first by dividing land
animals into biped and quadruped; and since the winged herd, and that
alone, comes out in the same class with man, we should divide bipeds into
those which have feathers and those which have not, and when they have been
divided, and the art of the management of mankind is brought to light, the
time will have come to produce our Statesman and ruler, and set him like a
charioteer in his place, and hand over to him the reins of state, for that
too is a vocation which belongs to him.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good; you have paid me the debt,--I mean, that you
have completed the argument, and I suppose that you added the digression by