   Second, the Sophist and Statesman say a lot about forms, and yet the forms discussed in these dialogues seem different in some key respects from those discussed in the Phaedo and first part of the Parmenides. Both the Sophist and Statesman search for the essence of their target kinds, the stable feature or collection of features that makes its possessor what it is. Each dialogue succeeds in revealing the essence of the kinds investigated. Are the sophist, the statesman, the angler, the weaver, and their arts separate forms of the sort discussed in the first part of the Parmenides? Strange if they were, since the arts are human inventions. The visitor does say (as noted in § 2 above) that “immaterial things, being finest and greatest, are revealed clearly only by means of a verbal account (logos) and by nothing else,” and that “all things now said are for the sake of those” (Statesman 285e–286b). The sophist and the statesman rank among great and difficult things (Sophist 218c–d, Statesman 278e; cf. 279a–b), and their arts are immaterial, though immanent in their possessors. So the visitor’s statement need not refer to separate forms. Still, the Timaeus (widely regarded as a late dialogue) speaks of separate immaterial forms, and such forms would be included in the Stranger’s statement. Whatever one makes of the treatment of forms in the Timaeus, separate forms are absent from the Sophist and Statesman, with one notable exception: at Sophist 245e–249d (the Battle of Gods and Giants), the Stranger tries to reconcile two extreme positions about being, one of which features separate, immaterial and unchanging forms.