_Si_. Well, now we will bring to bear on sponging each of these essential elements of Art, and see whether its character rings true, or returns a cracked note like bad pottery when it is tapped. It has got to be, like all art, a body of perceptions. Well, we find at once that our artist has to distinguish critically the man who will entertain him satisfactorily and not give him reason to wish that he had sponged elsewhere. Now, in as much as assaying—which is no more than the power of distinguishing between false and true coin—is a recognized profession, you will hardly refuse the same status to that which distinguishes between false and true _men_; the genuineness of men is more obscure than that of coins; this indeed is the gist of the wise Euripides’s complaint: But among men how tell the base apart? Virtue and vice stamp not the outward flesh. So much the greater the sponger’s art, which beats prophecy in the certainty of its conclusions upon problems so difficult. Next, there is the faculty of so directing your words and actions as to effect intimacy and convince your patron of your devotion: is that consistent with weak understanding or perception? _Tyc_. Certainly not. _Si_. Then at table one has to outshine other people, and show the difference between amateur and professional: is that to be done without thought and ingenuity? _Tyc_. No, indeed. _Si_. Or perhaps you fancy that any outsider who will take the trouble can tell a good dinner from a bad one. Well, the mighty Plato says, if the guest is not versed in cookery, the dressing of the banquet will be but unworthily judged. The next point to be established is, that sponging depends not merely on perceptions, but on perceptions regularly employed. Nothing simpler. The perceptions on which other arts are based frequently remain unemployed by their owner for days, nights, months, or years, without his art’s perishing; whereas, if those of the sponger were to miss their daily exercise, not merely his art would perish, but he with it. There remains the ‘useful purpose in human life’; it would take a madman to question that here. I find nothing that serves a more useful purpose in human life than eating and drinking; without them you cannot live. _Tyc_. That is true. _Si_. Moreover, sponging is not to be classed with beauty and strength, and so called a quality instead of an art? _Tyc_. No. _Si_. And, in the sphere of art, it does not denote the negative condition, of unskilfulness. That never brings its owner prosperity. Take an instance: if a man who did not understand navigation took charge of a ship in a stormy sea, would he be safe? _Tyc_. Not he. _Si_. Why, now? Because he wants the art which would enable him to save his life? _Tyc_. Exactly. _Si_. It follows that, if sponging was the negative of art, the sponger would not save his life by its means? _Tyc_. Yes. _Si_. A man is saved by art, not by the absence of it? _Tyc_. Quite so.