  In the Parmenides and elsewhere Plato speaks of separate,  immaterial forms as paradigms, and sensible  particulars as likenesses of them, which somehow fall short of the  original. This notion of a paradigm recurs in the Sophist, in  the Stranger’s discussion of imitation (Sophist 235d–e), but the Sophist and Statesman use another conception as well. A paradigm involves a mundane example with a  feature—sometimes an essential feature—relevant to the  definition of the more difficult kind under investigation. In the  Sophist, an angler, defined as a sort of hunter, guides the  initial search for the sophist, who is also identified as a sort of  hunter.