STRANGER: I will endeavour to speak more plainly out of love to your

good parts, Socrates; and, although I cannot at present entirely explain

myself, I will try, as we proceed, to make my meaning a little clearer.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What was the error of which, as you say, we were guilty

in our recent division?

STRANGER: The error was just as if some one who wanted to divide the

human race, were to divide them after the fashion which prevails in this

part of the world; here they cut off the Hellenes as one species, and

all the other species of mankind, which are innumerable, and have

no ties or common language, they include under the single name of

'barbarians,' and because they have one name they are supposed to be of

one species also. Or suppose that in dividing numbers you were to

cut off ten thousand from all the rest, and make of it one species,

comprehending the rest under another separate name, you might say that

here too was a single class, because you had given it a single name.

Whereas you would make a much better and more equal and logical

classification of numbers, if you divided them into odd and even; or of

the human species, if you divided them into male and female; and only

separated off Lydians or Phrygians, or any other tribe, and arrayed them

against the rest of the world, when you could no longer make a division

into parts which were also classes.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true; but I wish that this distinction between a

Statesman