  The Stranger’s lecture on parts and kinds and the second stage of the dichotomous division contribute to the overall impression that the Statesman is a philosophical exercise designed to train students to recognize, diagnose, and correct mistakes. The dialogue is full of trial and error, with many mistakes noticed and corrected along the way, while others go unremarked. This strategy provokes the interlocutor and audience to see for themselves what has gone wrong and why. In this way they learn the methods of Platonic dialectic.