the pugnacious.

THEAETETUS: Very good.

STRANGER: That part of the pugnacious which is a contest of bodily
strength may be properly called by some such name as violent.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And when the war is one of words, it may be termed
controversy?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And controversy may be of two kinds.

THEAETETUS: What are they?

STRANGER: When long speeches are answered by long speeches, and there
is public discussion about the just and unjust, that is forensic
controversy.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And there is a private sort of controversy, which is cut up
into questions and answers, and this is commonly called disputation?

THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the name.

STRANGER: And of disputation, that sort which is only a discussion about
contracts, and is carried on at random, and without rules of art, is
recognized by the reasoning faculty to be a distinct class, but has
hitherto had no distinctive name, and does not deserve to receive one
from us.

THEAETETUS: No; for the different sorts of it are too minute and
heterogeneous.

STRANGER: But that which proceeds by rules of art to dispute about
justice and injustice in their own nature, and about things in general,
we have been accustomed to call argumentation (Eristic)?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And of argumentation, one sort wastes money, and the other
makes money.

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: Suppose we try and give to each of these two classes a name.

THEAETETUS: Let us do so.

STRANGER: I should say that the habit which leads a man to neglect his
own affairs for the pleasure of conversation, of which the style is
far from being agreeable to the majority of his hearers, may be fairly
termed loquacity: such is my opinion.

THEAETETUS: That is the common name for it.

STRANGER: But now who the other is, who makes money out of private
disputation, it is your turn to say.

THEAETETUS: There is only one true answer: he is the wonderful Sophist,
of whom we are in pursuit, and who reappears again for the fourth time.

STRANGER: Yes, and with a fresh pedigree, for he is the money-making
species of the Eristic, disputatious, controversial, pugnacious,
combative, acquisitive family, as the argument has already proven.

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: How true was the observation that he was a many-sided animal,
and not to be caught with one hand, as they say!

THEAETETUS: Then you must catch h