"What are they? Phædrus asks.
"In the first place, Socrates replies, the taking a connected view of the scattered elements of a subject, so as to bring them into one Idea; and thus to give a definition of the subject, so as to make it clear what we are speaking of; as was then done in regard to Love. A definition was given of it, what it is: whether the definition was good or bad, at any rate there was a definition. And hence, in what followed, we were able to say what was clear and consistent with itself.
"And what, Phædrus asks, was the other feature?
"The dividing the subject into kinds or elements, according to the nature of the thing itself:—not breaking its natural members, like a bad carver who cannot hit the joint. So the two discourses which we have delivered, took the irrational part of the mind, as their common subject; and as the body has two different sides, the right and the left, with the same names for its parts; so the two discourses took the irrational portion of man; and the one took the left-hand portion, and divided this again, and again subdivided it, till, among the subdivisions, it found a left-handed kind of Love, of which nothing but ill was to be said. While the discourse that followed out the right-hand side of phrenzy, (the irrational portion of man's nature,) was led to something which bore the name of Love like the other, but which is divine, and was praised as the source of the greatest blessing."
"Now I," Socrates goes on to say, "am a great admirer of these processes of division and comprehension, by which I endeavour to speak and to think correctly. And if I can find any one who is able to see clearly what is by nature reducible to one and manifested in many elements, I follow his footsteps as a divine guide. Those who can do this, I call—whether rightly or not, God knows—but I have hitherto been in the habit of calling them dialectical men."
It is of no consequence to our present purpose whether either of the discourses of Socrates in the Phædrus, or the two together, as is here assumed, do contain a just division and subdivision of that part of the human soul which is distinguishable from Reason, and do thus exhibit, in its true relations, the affection of Love. It is evident that division and subdivision of this kind is here presented as, in Plato's opinion, a most valuable method; and those who could successfully practise this method are those whom he admires as dialectical men. This is here his Dialectic.
(Sophistes.) We are naturally led to ask whether this method of dividing a subject as the best way of examining it, be in any other part of the Platonic Dialogues more fully explained than it is in the Phædrus; or whether any rules are given for this kind of Dialectic.
To this we may reply, that in the Dialogue entitled The Sophist, a method of dividing a subject, in order to examine it, is explained and exemplified with extraordinary copiousness and ingenuity. The object proposed in that Dialogue is, to define what a Sophist is; and with that view, the principal speaker, (who is represented as an Eleatic stranger,) begins by first exemplifying what is his method of framing a definition, and by applying it to define an Angler. The course followed, though it now reads like a burlesque of philosophical methods, appears to have been at that time a bona fide attempt to be philosophical and methodical. It proceeds thus:
"We have to inquire concerning Angling. Is it an Art? It is. Now what kind of art? All art is an art of making or an art of getting: (Poietic or Ktetic.) It is Ktetic. Now the art of getting, is the art of getting by exchange or by capture: (Metabletic or Chirotic.) Getting by capture is by contest or by chase: (Agonistic or Thereutic.) Getting by chase is a chase of lifeless or of living things: (the first has no name, the second is Zootheric.) The chase of living things is the chase of land animals or of water animals: (Pezotheric or Enygrotheric.) Chase of water animals is of birds or of fish: (Ornithothereutic and Halieutic.) Chase of fish is by inclosing or by striking them: (Hercotheric or Plectic.) We strike them by day with pointed instruments, or by night, using torches: (hence the division Ankistreutic and Pyreutic.) Of Ankistreutic, one kind consists in spearing the fish downwards from above, the other in twitching them upwards from below: (these two arts are Triodontic and Aspalieutic.) And thus we have, what we sought, the notion and the description of angling: namely that it is a Ktetic, Chirotic, Thereutic, Zootheric, Enygrotheric, Halieutic, Plectic, Ankistreutic, Aspalieutic Art."
Several other examples are given of this ingenious mode of definition, but they are all introduced with reference to the definition of the Sophist. And it will further illustrate this method to show how, according to it, the Sophist is related to the Angler.