  The Statesman chiefly aims to demonstrate how to undertake  all such inquiries. Its own inquiry stimulates the participants (and  us readers) to recognize what mistakes to avoid and what paths are  worth pursuing and why. But significantly, as one sees from comparing the treatments of the sophist and statesman, different kinds of  subject matter demand different sorts of methods. So we cannot simply extend the methods of the Sophist and Statesman in  a mechanical way to the investigation of the philosopher and other  great and difficult topics. These dialogues teach us how to go about  philosophical investigations. They do not offer a formula that can be simply applied to further cases.