What, then, is this new method? It is mentioned more briefly in a dialogue which does feature Socrates as its main character, the Phaedrus (265d–266b; more on this dialogue later). There it is called the method of “collection and division.” It’s going to be used extensively here in the Sophist, and again in the Statesman. It works like this. First, you need to gather a lot of things together that share a single kind or character—that’s the “collection” part. Then you find distinctions that allow you to
