  What should we make of the Stranger’s lecture on parts and kinds, given that it overlooks the real faults in Young Socrates’ proposal and that the second stage of the division yields such odd results? The Stranger probably suspects the nature of the boy’s confusion and adopts an approach to help him see his mistake. His lecture assumes the boy’s point of view (that statecraft differs from other modes of herding because of the physical traits of the animals herded), advises him to divide kinds into sub-kinds with roughly equal extension, and then demonstrates in hilarious detail the results of that assumption. According to this interpretation, we should not take the Stranger’s lecture to reveal Plato’s views on metaphysics and method. In the lecture itself the visitor appears to warn Young Socrates and the audience to beware of his advice (Statesman 263b: “But be absolutely on your guard against ever thinking that you have heard this [i.e., the difference between kind and part] clearly distinguished by me”).