ALCIBIADES: Surely not. But I scarcely understand what I mean myself.
SOCRATES: Perhaps, if you give me your best attention, 'two of us' looking together, we may find what we seek.
ALCIBIADES: I am attending, Socrates, to the best of my power.
SOCRATES: We are agreed, then, that every form of ophthalmia is a disease, but not every disease ophthalmia?
ALCIBIADES: We are.
SOCRATES: And so far we seem to be right. For every one who suffers from a fever is sick; but the sick, I conceive, do not all have fever or gout or ophthalmia, although each of these is a disease, which, according to those whom we call physicians, may require a different treatment. They are not all alike, nor do they produce the same result, but each has its own effect, and yet they are all diseases. May we not take an illustration from the artizans?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: There are cobblers and carpenters and sculptors and others of all sorts and kinds, whom we need not stop to enumerate. All have their distinct employments and all are workmen, although they are not all of them cobblers or carpenters or sculptors.
ALCIBIADES: No, indeed.
SOCRATES: And in like manner men differ in regard to want of sense. Those who are most out of their wits we call 'madmen,' while we term those who are less far gone 'stupid' or 'idiotic,' or, if we prefer gentler language, describe them as 'romantic' or 'simple-minded,' or, again, as 'innocent' or 'inexperienced' or 'foolish.' You may even find other names, if you seek for them; but by all of them lack of sense is intended. They only differ as one art appeared to us to differ from another or one disease from another. Or what is your opinion?