SOPHIST (continued 1)
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Plato and Jowett, Benjamin
THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the proper name.
STRANGER: Seeing, then, that all arts are either acquisitive or creative, in which class shall we place the art of the angler?
THEAETETUS: Clearly in the acquisitive class.
STRANGER: And the acquisitive may be subdivided into two parts: there is exchange, which is voluntary and is effected by gifts, hire, purchase; and the other part of acquisitive, which takes by force of word or deed, may be termed conquest?
THEAETETUS: That is implied in what has been said.
STRANGER: And may not conquest be again subdivided?
THEAETETUS: How?
STRANGER: Open force may be called fighting, and secret force may have the general name of hunting?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And there is no reason why the art of hunting should not be further divided.
THEAETETUS: How would you make the division?
STRANGER: Into the hunting of living and of lifeless prey.
THEAETETUS: Yes, if both kinds exist.
STRANGER: Of course they exist; but the hunting after lifeless things having no special name, except some sorts of diving, and other small matters, may be omitted; the hunting after living things may be called animal hunting.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And animal hunting may be truly said to have two divisions, land-animal hunting, which has many kinds and names, and water-animal hunting, or the hunting after animals who swim?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And of swimming animals, one class lives on the wing and the other in the water?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: Fowling is the general term under which the hunting of all birds is included.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: The hunting of animals who live in the water has the general name of fishing.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And this sort of hunting may be further divided also into two principal kinds?
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: There is one kind which takes them in nets, another which takes them by a blow.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean, and how do you distinguish them?
STRANGER: As to the first kind—all that surrounds and encloses anything to prevent egress, may be rightly called an enclosure.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: For which reason twig baskets, casting-nets, nooses, creels, and the like may all be termed 'enclosures'?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And therefore this first kind of capture may be called by us capture with enclosures, or something of that sort?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: The other kind, which is practised by a blow with hooks and three-pronged spears, when summed up under one name, may be called striking, unless you, Theaetetus, can find some better name?
THEAETETUS: Never mind the name—what you suggest will do very well.
STRANGER: There is one mode of striking, which is done at night, and by the light of a fire, and is by the hunters themselves called firing, or spearing by firelight.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And the fishing by day is called by the general name of barbing, because the spears, too, are barbed at the point.
THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the term.
STRANGER: Of this barb-fishing, that which strikes the fish who is below from above is called spearing, because this is the way in which the three-pronged spears are mostly used.