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 mankind is most of an adept at the airy life. (Plato is here introducing a new subdivision, i.e. that of bipeds into men and birds. Others however refer the passage to the division into quadrupeds and bipeds, making pigs compete with human beings and the pig-driver with the king. According to this explanation we must translate the words above, 'freest and airiest of creation,' 'worthiest and laziest of creation.')
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.