Sophist

TheodorusHere we are, Socrates, as we agreed yesterday, punctual as we should be. And we’ve brought this man along, a stranger. He comes from Elea, he belongs to the circle of Parmenides and Zeno, and he’s very much a philosopher.note

SocratesThen are you perhaps, Theodorus, bringing not a stranger but some god without knowing it, as Homer’s account has it? He says that the other 216b gods, and not least the god of strangers, keep company with human beings who have a just sense of shame, and look down on people’s insolence and their lawfulness. So perhaps this man following you is one of the higher powers, come to watch over us and refute us, poor as we are at arguments. He’d be a sort of god of refutation.note

TheodorusThat’s not our stranger’s way, Socrates. He’s more measured than the people who are keen on disputes. To me the man doesn’t seem to be a god at all, but he’s certainly godlike, since I call all 216c philosophers that.

SocratesAnd rightly so, my friend. But this kind is probably not much easier to tell apart, so to speak, than the kind of the god. These men take on all sorts of appearances because of other people’s ignorance, and they “go about the cities.” I mean those who aren’t fake but genuine philosophers, looking down from on high at the life of those below. Some people think them worth nothing, others worth everything. Sometimes they appear as statesmen, 216d sometimes as sophists, and sometimes they might give some people the impression of being completely mad. But I’d be glad to learn from our stranger, if he doesn’t mind, what 217a the people in his part of the world thought about these things, and what they called them.

TheodorusWhat things, exactly?

SocratesSophist, statesman, philosopher.

TheodorusWhat is it about them that puzzles you most? What sort of question did you have in mind to ask?

SocratesThis: did they think all of these were one thing, or two? Or, since there are three names, did they also divide them into three kinds and attach a kind to each name, one by one?

TheodorusWell, I don’t think he’d begrudge going through them. Or what do you say, Stranger?

StrangerJust that, Theodorus. I don’t begrudge it, and it isn’t hard to say that they thought there were three. But to define clearly what each one is—that’s no small or easy job.

TheodorusAs it happens, Socrates, you’ve hit on questions very close to the ones we were putting to him before we came here. He made the same excuses to us then that he’s making to you now. Yet he says he’s heard the subject thoroughly discussed and hasn’t forgotten it.

SocratesThen, Stranger, don’t refuse us the very first favor we’ve asked. Just tell us this much. Which do you usually prefer: to go through what you want to show someone on your own, in a long speech, or to do it by questions? Parmenides once used questions when he went through some magnificent arguments in my presence. I was young then, and he was already quite old.note

StrangerIf the other person is no trouble and responds easily to the rein, Socrates, it’s easier the first way, with a partner. If not, it’s easier on one’s own.

SocratesWell, you can choose whichever of those present you like; they’ll all answer you gently. But if you take my advice, you’ll pick one of the young ones, Theaetetus here, or anyone else, if someone’s more to your liking.

StrangerSocrates, since this is the first time I’ve met you all, I’m somewhat embarrassed at the idea of not conducting 217e our conversation in short exchanges, word for word. I’d rather not stretch out a long speech on my own, or even addressed to someone else, as if I were giving a display. In fact the question you just asked isn’t as small as one might expect from the way it was put; it calls for a very long account. On the other hand, not to oblige you and these gentlemen, especially after you’ve spoken as you did, strikes me as ungracious to my hosts and 218a boorish. So I gladly accept Theaetetus as my partner in conversation, both because of my own earlier talk with him and because you now urge me to.

TheaetetusThen do just that, Stranger, and as Socrates said, you’ll be doing all of us a favor.

StrangerIt looks as if there’s nothing more to say about that, Theaetetus. From here on, it seems, the conversation will be with you. But if the length wears you out and you get annoyed, don’t blame me—blame these friends of yours.

TheaetetusWell, I don’t think I’ll give up just now. But if anything like that does happen, we’ll bring in Socrates here. He’s Socrates’ namesake, but he’s my age and my partner at the gymnasium, and he’s used to sharing most of my hard work.note

StrangerWell said. You can decide about that privately as the discussion goes on. But you and I need to look into this together. As it seems to me, we should start now with the sophist, searching out 218c and bringing to light in an account what he is. For at present you and I have only the name in common about him. As for the thing we each call by that name, we may well each have our own private idea of it. But in every case one should always reach agreement about the thing itself through accounts, rather than about the name alone without an account. Now, the tribe we have in mind to search for, the sophist, isn’t the easiest thing in the world to grasp, to say what it is. Yet for any great matter that needs to be worked through well, everyone has agreed, and long ago, 218d that one should practice first on small and easier things before tackling the greatest ones.

TheaetetusNo, I can’t.

StrangerThen shall we take up something trivial and try to make it a model for the greater thing?

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerWhat, then, should we put before us that’s familiar and small, but no less open to an account than any of the greater things? The angler, say. Isn’t he known to everyone, and not worth much serious attention?

TheaetetusThat’s so.

StrangerStill, I expect he’ll give us a method and an account that suit what we want.

TheaetetusThat would be fine.

StrangerCome on, then, let’s start with him like this. Tell me: shall we class him as someone with an art, or as someone without an art but with some other capacity?

TheaetetusCertainly not as someone without an art.

StrangerBut of all the arts there are, roughly speaking, two kinds.

TheaetetusHow so?

StrangerThere’s farming, and all care of any mortal body. Then there’s whatever has to do with things put together and molded, which we 219b call equipment. And there’s imitation. All of these together could most justly be called by a single name.

TheaetetusHow, and by what name?

StrangerWhenever someone brings into being anything that didn’t exist before, we say, I take it, that the one who brings it produces, and that what is brought is produced.

TheaetetusRight.

StrangerAnd all the things we just went through had their power directed to this.

TheaetetusYes, they did.

StrangerThen let’s sum them up and call them the productive art.

TheaetetusSo be it.

StrangerNext, there’s the whole kind that has to do with learning and with coming to know, and also money-making, competition and hunting. None of these crafts anything. Some get things that are, or that have come to be, into their hands by words and deeds; others don’t let them fall into the hands of those trying to get them. For these reasons, I suppose, all these parts together would most fittingly be called an acquisitive art.

TheaetetusYes, that would fit.

StrangerNow, since all the arts are either acquisitive or productive, Theaetetus, in which shall we place angling?

TheaetetusIn the acquisitive, obviously.

StrangerAnd aren’t there two kinds of acquisition? One is exchange between willing parties, through gifts, hiring and buying. The rest, which gets everything into its hands by deeds or by words, would be capture.

TheaetetusSo it seems, at least from what’s been said.

StrangerWell then, shouldn’t capture be cut in two?

TheaetetusHow?

StrangerBy setting down all of it that’s done openly as competition, and all of it that’s done in secret as hunting.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd it would make no sense not to cut hunting in two as well.

TheaetetusTell me how.

StrangerBy dividing it into the hunting of the lifeless kind and the hunting of the living kind.

TheaetetusOf course—if there really are both.

StrangerHow could there not be? We should let the hunting of lifeless things go. It has no name, apart from some parts of diving and a few other little things like that. The other part, the hunting of living animals, we should call animal-hunting.

TheaetetusSo be it.

StrangerAnd wouldn’t it be right to speak of two kinds of animal-hunting? One concerns the kind that goes on foot and is divided into many kinds with many names: land-hunting. The other, all hunting of swimming animals, is fluid-hunting.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerAnd among swimming creatures, don’t we see one tribe that’s winged and another that lives in water?

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerAnd all hunting of the winged kind is called, I believe, fowling.

TheaetetusYes, it is.

StrangerAnd the hunting of water creatures is, pretty much as a whole, fishing.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerWell then, couldn’t we divide this hunting into two very large parts in turn?

TheaetetusWhat parts?

StrangerOne part does its hunting simply with enclosures, the other by striking.

TheaetetusWhat do you mean? How are you distinguishing each one?

StrangerThe first like this: anything that surrounds something and shuts it in to keep it from escaping can reasonably be called an enclosure.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerThen wicker traps, nets, snares, creels and the like—surely we should call them nothing but enclosures?

TheaetetusNothing else.

StrangerSo we’ll call this part of hunting enclosure-hunting, or something like that.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd the part done by striking with hooks and tridents is 220d different from that one. We should now call it, in a single word, strike-hunting. Or what better name could anyone give it, Theaetetus?

TheaetetusLet’s not worry about the name. That one will do.

StrangerOf strike-hunting, then, the part done at night by firelight has come to be called fire-fishing, I think, by the hunters themselves.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerAnd all the part done by day is hook-hunting, since even tridents have hooks at their points.

TheaetetusYes, that’s what it’s called.

StrangerNow, of the hook-hunting part of strike-hunting, the part done from above downward is called, I think, trident-fishing, because that’s how tridents are mostly used.

TheaetetusSome people call it that, anyway.

StrangerAnd what’s left is, you might say, just one more kind.

TheaetetusWhich one?

StrangerThe one with the opposite kind of strike. It’s done with a hook, and it doesn’t hit the fish wherever on its body one happens to, as 221a with tridents. Each time it strikes around the head and mouth of the catch, which is then pulled up from below, in the opposite direction, with rods and reeds. What shall we say its name should be, Theaetetus?

TheaetetusI think what we set out a moment ago to find has now been accomplished.

StrangerSo now you and I 221b have agreed not only on the name of angling; we’ve also adequately grasped the account of the thing itself. Of art as a whole, half was acquisitive. Of the acquisitive, half was capture; of capture, hunting; of hunting, animal-hunting; of animal-hunting, fluid-hunting. Of fluid-hunting, the whole lower section was fishing; of fishing, strike-hunting; of strike-hunting, hook-hunting. And of this, the part concerned with the strike that pulls from below 221c upward has taken its name from the action itself. That’s angling, which we were just looking for.note

TheaetetusThat’s certainly been made perfectly clear.

StrangerCome on, then, let’s use this model and try to find out what the sophist is, too.

TheaetetusBy all means.

StrangerNow, our first question was whether we should take the angler to be a layman or someone with an art.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd now, Theaetetus, shall we take this man to be a layman, or in every sense truly a sophist?

TheaetetusNot a layman at all. I see what you mean: someone with that name is anything but a layman.

StrangerThen it seems we have to take him to have some art.

TheaetetusThen what art can it be?

StrangerGood gods, have we failed to notice that the one man is a relative of the other?

TheaetetusWho of whom?

StrangerThe angler of the sophist.

TheaetetusHow?

StrangerThey both look to me like hunters.

TheaetetusWhat sort of hunting does the other one do? We’ve described the first.

StrangerA moment ago we divided all hunting in two, cutting off one part for swimming creatures and the other for land creatures.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd we went through the first, as far as it concerns the swimming creatures that live in water. But we left the land part undivided, saying it had many kinds.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerUp to this point, then, the sophist and the angler travel together, starting from the acquisitive art.

TheaetetusIt certainly looks that way.

StrangerBut they part ways at animal-hunting. One heads for the sea, I suppose, and for rivers and lakes, to hunt the animals in them.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerThe other heads for the land, and for rivers of a different sort—rich meadows, you might say, of wealth and youth—to capture the creatures there.

TheaetetusWhat do you mean?

StrangerLand-hunting has two very large parts.

TheaetetusWhat is each of them?

StrangerOne is the hunting of tame animals, the other of wild ones.

TheaetetusSo there’s such a thing as hunting tame animals?

StrangerThere is, if a human being is a tame animal. But put it however you like. You can count nothing as tame. You can count something else as tame but human beings as wild. Or you can say that human beings are tame but hold that there’s no hunting of them. Settle it for us: which of these would you like to say?

TheaetetusWell, Stranger, I think we’re a tame animal, and I say there is such a thing as hunting human beings.

StrangerThen let’s say that tame-hunting is twofold as well.

TheaetetusOn what basis?

StrangerWe’ll define piracy, slave-raiding, tyranny and warfare as a whole, all together as one, as violent hunting.

TheaetetusGood.

StrangerAnd we’ll call law-court pleading, public speaking and conversation, again all together as one, a single 222d art of persuasion.

TheaetetusRight.

StrangerOf persuasion, then, let’s say there are two kinds.

TheaetetusWhat are they?

StrangerOne takes place in private, the other in public.

TheaetetusYes, there are those two kinds.

StrangerAnd again, of private hunting, isn’t one part wage-earning and the other gift-giving?

TheaetetusI don’t follow.

StrangerIt seems you haven’t yet paid attention to the way lovers hunt.

TheaetetusWhat about it?

StrangerThat they actually give gifts to the ones they’ve caught.

TheaetetusVery true.

StrangerThen let this be a kind of the art of love.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerNow take the part of wage-earning that keeps company by gratifying people. It makes pleasure its only bait and asks for nothing as its wage but its own keep. We’d all say, 223a I think, that this is flattery, or some art of pleasing.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerBut the part that claims to keep company for the sake of excellence, and asks for money as its wage—doesn’t that kind deserve to be called by another name?

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerWhat name, then? Try to say.

TheaetetusIt’s obvious. I think we’ve found the sophist. That’s what I’d say, and I’d consider I was calling him by the right name.

StrangerSo according to our present account, Theaetetus, it seems that the art in question must be called sophistry. It belongs to appropriation, capture, acquisition, hunting, animal-hunting, land-hunting, hunting on dry land, tame-hunting, human-hunting, persuasion-hunting, private hunting, wage-earning, selling for money and education in seeming. It is the hunting of rich and prominent young men. That, at any rate, is where our present account lands us.

TheaetetusAbsolutely.

StrangerLet’s look at it this way too. What we’re looking for has a share in no trivial art, but a highly complex one. In fact, even from what we said earlier, it gives the appearance of being not what we’re now saying it is, but some other kind.

TheaetetusHow so?

StrangerThe acquisitive art had two kinds, I believe: one part hunting, the other exchange.

TheaetetusYes, it did.

StrangerShall we say there are two kinds of exchange, one by giving, the other by trading?

TheaetetusLet’s say so.

StrangerAnd we’ll say in turn that trading is cut in two.

TheaetetusHow?

StrangerInto the selling of one’s own products, practiced by those who make them, and dealing, which exchanges the works of others.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerWell then, isn’t the part of dealing that exchanges within a city, roughly half of it, called retail?

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd the part that exchanges by buying and selling from one city to another is commerce?

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerAnd haven’t we noticed that commerce sells things for money? Part of it exchanges the things the body feeds on and uses, and part the things the soul does.

TheaetetusWhat do you mean by that?

StrangerPerhaps it’s the part concerned with the soul that we don’t recognize, since we do understand the other one, I take it.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerThen take music, all of it, which is regularly bought in one city and carried off to another and sold there. Take painting, too, and conjuring, and many other things for the soul that are carried around and sold, some for amusement and some for serious ends. Let’s say that whoever carries and sells them can rightly be called a merchant, no less than someone who sells food and drink.

TheaetetusVery true.

StrangerAnd won’t you give the same name to someone who buys up learning and trades it for money from city to city?

TheaetetusDefinitely.

StrangerThen one part of this soul-commerce could most justly be called display, couldn’t it? The other part is in fact the sale of learning, so we have no choice but to call it by a name related to that activity—one no less ridiculous than the last.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerOf this learning-selling, then, the part concerned 224c with learning in the other arts must be called by one name, and the part concerned with excellence by another.

TheaetetusOf course.

Stranger“Art-selling” would suit the part concerned with the other subjects. As for the part concerned with excellence, you try to name it.

TheaetetusWhat other name could anyone give it without striking a false note? It is the very thing we’re looking for, the sophistic kind.

StrangerNo other name. Come on, then, let’s pull it together. Sophistry has come to light a second time. It is the selling part of acquisition, exchange, trading, 224d commerce and soul-commerce, and what it sells is speeches and learning about excellence.

TheaetetusVery much so.

StrangerAnd third, I think, suppose someone settled right here in a city. He buys some learning on these same subjects and makes some up himself, sells it, and has set himself to make his living that way. You’d call him nothing other than what we called him just now.

TheaetetusOf course I would.

StrangerSo take acquisition, then exchange, then trading, whether it is retail or the selling of one’s own products—either way. Whatever kind of it sells learning about such things, it seems you’ll always call sophistic.

TheaetetusI have to. We must follow the argument.

StrangerLet’s look further, then, and see whether the kind we’re now pursuing resembles something like this.

TheaetetusLike what?

StrangerWe had competition as a part of acquisition.

TheaetetusYes, we did.

StrangerThen it wouldn’t be out of place to divide it in two.

TheaetetusTell me along what lines.

StrangerSetting down one part as rivalry and the other as fighting.

TheaetetusAgreed.

StrangerNow, for the part of fighting done body against body, it would be reasonable and fitting to give it some such name as “violence.”

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd for the part done words against words, Theaetetus, what else 225b could one call it but disputation?

TheaetetusNothing else.

StrangerAnd disputation must be set down as twofold.

TheaetetusHow?

StrangerInsofar as it takes place in public, pitting long speeches against opposing long speeches about what is just and unjust, it is law-court pleading.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd the part that takes place in private and is chopped into bits, questions against answers—surely we’re used to calling that nothing but contradiction?

TheaetetusNothing else.

StrangerWithin contradiction, take the part that disputes about contracts 225c but goes about it at random and without art. We must set it down as a kind, since our account has recognized it as distinct. But it got no name from those before us, and it doesn’t deserve to get one from us now.

TheaetetusTrue. It’s been divided into pieces that are too small and too various.

StrangerBut the part that has art, and disputes about just and unjust things themselves and about everything else in general—aren’t we used to calling that eristic?

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerNow, of eristic, one part happens to waste money and the other to make money.

TheaetetusAbsolutely.

StrangerThen let’s try to say what name we should call each of them by.

TheaetetusYes, we should.

StrangerWell, take the kind that, for the pleasure of spending time on such things, neglects its own affairs, and whose style most of its listeners find no pleasure in hearing. In my judgment it’s called nothing other than idle chatter.

TheaetetusYes, that’s more or less what it’s called.

StrangerNow it’s your turn. Try to name its opposite, the kind that makes money from private quarrels.

TheaetetusAnd what could anyone say, without going wrong, except that here he comes again, for the fourth time now, that wonderful fellow we’ve been pursuing—the sophist?

StrangerNothing else, it seems. The sophist is the money-making kind belonging to the art of eristic, which is part of contradiction, of disputation, of fighting, of competition, of acquisition—as our account has now revealed once again.

TheaetetusExactly so.

StrangerSo do you see how truly it’s said that this beast is many-sided and, as the saying goes, can’t be caught with one hand?

TheaetetusThen we’ll need both.

StrangerWe will, and we must do it as best we can, by following a track of his like this one. Tell me: we have words, I suppose, for certain household chores?

TheaetetusPlenty. But which of the many are you asking about?

StrangerOnes like these: we speak of filtering, sifting, winnowing, and sorting.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerAnd besides these, carding, spinning, weaving; and we know of countless other such things in the arts. Don’t we?

TheaetetusWhat is it about them that you want to point out, putting these forward as examples and asking about them all?

StrangerEverything we mentioned is spoken of, I take it, as a way of dividing.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerThen by my reckoning, since in all of them there’s one art concerned with these things, we’ll count it worthy of one name.

TheaetetusCalling it what?

StrangerThe art of discrimination.

TheaetetusSo be it.

StrangerNow look and see whether we can somehow discern two kinds within it in turn.

TheaetetusThat’s a quick inquiry you’re setting me—too quick for me.

StrangerWell, in the separations we mentioned, one was separating worse from better, the other like from like.

TheaetetusPut that way, it pretty much seems so.

StrangerNow, I don’t have a name in use for the one. But for the separation that keeps the better and throws away the worse, I do.

TheaetetusTell me what it is.

StrangerEvery separation of that sort, as I understand it, is called by everyone a kind of purification.

TheaetetusYes, it is.

StrangerThen wouldn’t anyone see that the purifying kind, in turn, is twofold?

TheaetetusYes, given time, perhaps. But I don’t see it now.

StrangerWell, the many kinds of purification that concern bodies are properly gathered under one name.

TheaetetusWhich kinds, and under what name?

StrangerFirst, those of living things: what inside bodies is purified by being correctly separated through gymnastics 227a and medicine, and, on the outside—trivial things to mention—what the bath-keeper’s art provides. Then those of inanimate bodies, which fulling and the whole art of furbishing take care of, and which have acquired many petty names that seem ridiculous.

TheaetetusVery much so.

StrangerQuite, Theaetetus. But the method of argument cares neither less nor more about sponging than about taking medicine, whether one benefits us a little by purifying and the other a lot. For it is trying, for the sake of acquiring 227b intelligence, to discern which of all the arts are akin and which are not. For that purpose it honors them all equally, and where they’re alike it considers none more ridiculous than another. It doesn’t regard someone who illustrates hunting by generalship as any more dignified than someone who illustrates it by lice-catching—only, as a rule, as more pretentious. And so now, as to your question—what name we’ll give to all the capacities whose lot is to purify a body, whether animate or inanimate 227c —it won’t make any difference to the method which name seems most decent. Let the name simply bind together everything that purifies anything else, and keep it apart from the purifications of the soul.

TheaetetusWell, I’ve understood. And I agree that there are two kinds of purification, and that one of them is the kind that concerns the soul, separate from the kind that concerns the body.

StrangerExcellent. Now listen to what comes next 227d and try once more to cut what’s been said in two.

TheaetetusWherever you lead the way, I’ll try to cut along with you.

StrangerDo we say that wickedness in the soul is something different from excellence?

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerAnd purification, we said, was keeping the one and throwing out whatever is bad.

TheaetetusYes, it was.

StrangerSo in the case of the soul too, insofar as we find some removal of vice, we’ll be striking the right note if we call it purification.

TheaetetusVery much so.

StrangerWe have to say that there are two kinds of vice in the soul.

TheaetetusWhat are they?

StrangerOne is like disease in a body, the other like ugliness arising in it.

TheaetetusI don’t follow.

StrangerPerhaps you haven’t considered disease and discord to be the same thing?

TheaetetusAgain, I don’t know what I should say to that either.

StrangerDo you think discord is anything other than the falling-out of what is naturally akin, resulting from some corruption?

TheaetetusNothing else.

StrangerAnd is ugliness anything other than disproportion, a kind that’s unsightly wherever it’s present?

TheaetetusNothing else at all.

StrangerWell then: in the soul of people in a bad state, haven’t we noticed judgments at odds with desires, spirit with pleasures, reason with pains, and all these with one another?

TheaetetusVery much so.

StrangerAnd yet all of them are necessarily akin.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerSo if we call wickedness discord and disease of the soul, we’ll be speaking correctly.

TheaetetusQuite correctly.

StrangerWell then: when things that partake of motion set themselves a target and try to hit it, but on every attempt swerve away from it and miss, shall we say this happens to them because of proportion with one another, or, on the contrary, because of disproportion?

TheaetetusObviously because of disproportion.

StrangerBut we know that every soul that is ignorant of anything is ignorant involuntarily.

TheaetetusVery much so.

StrangerNow being ignorant, when a soul is striving toward truth 228d and its comprehension swerves off course, is nothing other than derangement.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerSo we have to set down a mindless soul as ugly and lacking proportion.

TheaetetusIt seems so.

StrangerThen there are, it appears, these two kinds of bad things in it. One is what most people call wickedness, and it’s quite clearly the soul’s disease.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerThe other they call ignorance, but they’re unwilling to admit that it is vice when it occurs only in the soul.

TheaetetusI certainly have to concede what I doubted a moment ago when you said it: that there are two kinds of vice in the soul. Cowardice, licentiousness, and injustice must all be considered disease in us, while the condition of widespread and manifold ignorance must be set down as ugliness.

StrangerNow in the case of the body, two arts have arisen for these two conditions, haven’t they?

TheaetetusWhich two?

StrangerFor ugliness, gymnastics; for disease, medicine.

TheaetetusApparently.

StrangerAnd so for insolence, injustice, and cowardice, the art of correction is by nature, of all the arts, the one most closely related to Justice.

TheaetetusThat’s likely, at any rate, so far as human opinion goes.

StrangerWell then: for ignorance of every kind, could anyone more correctly name any art other than teaching?

TheaetetusNone.

StrangerCome now: must we say that teaching has only one kind, or more than one, with two that are greatest? Think about it.

TheaetetusI’m thinking.

StrangerAnd I think this is how we might find it most quickly.

TheaetetusHow?

StrangerBy looking at ignorance to see whether it has a cut somewhere down its middle. For if it turns out to be double, it clearly forces teaching to have two parts as well, one for each of its kinds.

TheaetetusWell? Can you somehow see what we’re looking for now?

StrangerI do seem, anyway, to see one large and difficult kind of ignorance marked off by itself, a counterweight to all its other parts.

TheaetetusWhat kind is that?

StrangerThinking you know something when you don’t. It’s probably through this that all our errors of thought arise, for every one of us.

TheaetetusTrue.

StrangerAnd to this alone, of the kinds of ignorance, the name “stupidity” has been given, I think.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerAnd what should we call the part of teaching that gets rid of it?

TheaetetusI think, Stranger, that the other part is called instruction in the crafts, but this part, here at least, we call education.

StrangerYes, Theaetetus, and pretty much among all the Greeks. But we still have to consider this as well: whether education is now wholly indivisible, or has some division worth naming.

TheaetetusThen we have to consider it.

StrangerWell, it seems to me that this too splits somewhere further.

TheaetetusAlong what line?

StrangerOf teaching by speech, one road seems to be rougher, while its other part is smoother.

TheaetetusWhat do we mean by each of these?

StrangerOne is time-honored, the way of our fathers. People used it above all with their sons, and many still use it now, when 230a their sons do something wrong: sometimes being harsh with them, sometimes encouraging them more gently. The whole of it one might most correctly call admonition.

TheaetetusThat’s so.

StrangerAs for the other, some people, it seems, reasoned it through for themselves and came to believe that all stupidity is involuntary. Someone who thinks he’s wise, they concluded, would never be willing to learn anything about the things he thinks he’s clever at, and the admonishing kind of education achieves little for a great deal of effort.

TheaetetusAnd they’re right to think so.

StrangerSo they set out to cast out this belief by another method.

TheaetetusWhat method?

StrangerThey question a person about the things he thinks he’s saying something about when he’s saying nothing. Then, since his judgments wander, they examine them easily. They bring them together in argument and set them side by side, and in doing so they show that they contradict one another at the same time, about the same things, in relation to the same things, in the same respects. When people see this, they get angry with themselves and become gentle toward others, 230c and in this way they’re freed from the inflated and rigid judgments they held about themselves. Of all releases it’s the most pleasant to hear about, and the most lasting for the one who undergoes it.

TheaetetusThat’s certainly the best and most sensible state to be in.

StrangerFor all these reasons, Theaetetus, we must say that refutation is the greatest and most authoritative of purifications. And we must consider that someone who hasn’t been refuted, even if he happens 230e to be the Great King, is unpurified in the most important respects. He has become uneducated and ugly in exactly those respects in which anyone who is going to be truly happy ought to be purest and finest.note

TheaetetusAbsolutely.

StrangerWell then, who shall we say 231a the people who use this art are? I’m afraid to call them sophists.

TheaetetusWhy?

StrangerIn case we grant them too great an honor.

TheaetetusAnd yet what we’ve just described does resemble someone like that.

StrangerSo does a wolf resemble a dog—the wildest thing the tamest. A careful person must always be on guard above all about resemblances; they’re a very slippery kind. Still, let it stand. For I don’t think the dispute will 231b be over minor boundaries, once people are sufficiently on their guard.

TheaetetusNo, probably not.

StrangerThen let purification be part of the art of discrimination; and let the part of purification that concerns the soul be marked off. Of that, teaching; of teaching, education. And of education, the refutation of empty conceit of wisdom, which has turned up in our present discussion—let us call that nothing other than the sophistry of noble lineage.

TheaetetusLet’s call it that. But I’m at a loss now, because so many things have 231c appeared, about what one should say, truthfully and with confidence, the sophist really is.

StrangerNaturally you’re at a loss. But you should suppose that by now he too is very much at a loss about how he’ll still slip through our argument. For the proverb is right: it isn’t easy to dodge them all. So now, especially, we have to go after him.

TheaetetusYou’re right.

StrangerFirst, then, let’s stop and catch our breath, so to speak, and while we rest, let’s reckon up among 231d ourselves—come on—how many ways the sophist has appeared to us. I think he was first found to be a paid hunter of rich young men.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerSecond, a sort of merchant in learning for the soul.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerAnd third, didn’t he turn up as a retailer of these same goods?

TheaetetusYes, and fourth, he was for us someone who sells learning of his own making.

StrangerYou remember correctly. I’ll try to remember 231e the fifth: he was a kind of athlete in verbal competition, who had claimed the art of eristic as his own.

TheaetetusYes, he was.

StrangerThe sixth was open to dispute, but still we granted him the point and set him down as a purifier of the soul, removing judgments that obstruct learning.

TheaetetusAbsolutely.

StrangerNow, do you notice that when someone appears to know many things, yet is called by the name of a single art, this appearance isn’t sound? Clearly, whoever has this experience about some art can’t discern the feature of it that all these branches of learning point to. That’s why he calls the person who has them by many names instead of one.

TheaetetusThat’s very likely more or less how it is.

StrangerThen let’s not let this happen to us, at least, in our search, out of laziness. Let’s first take up again one of the things we said about the sophist. For one of them struck me as revealing him more than any other.

TheaetetusWhich one?

StrangerWe said, I think, that he was a practitioner of contradiction.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerWell, and also that he becomes a teacher of this very thing to others?

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerLet’s consider, then, what it is such people claim to make others capable of contradicting about. Let our inquiry start from the beginning in some such way as this. 232c Come: about divine things, which are hidden from most people, do they make them able to do this?

TheaetetusThat’s what’s said of them, at any rate.

StrangerWhat about the visible things of earth and heaven and everything connected with them?

TheaetetusNaturally.

StrangerAnd again, in private conversations, whenever something is said about coming-to-be and being in general, we know, don’t we, that they’re clever at contradicting, and that they make others capable of doing just what they do?

TheaetetusAbsolutely.

StrangerAnd what about laws and all political matters? Don’t they promise to make people able to dispute about them?

TheaetetusYes—practically nobody would talk with them if they didn’t promise that.

StrangerAnd as for all the arts together and each one singly, what one should say to contradict each craftsman himself has been published, I believe, and set out in writing for anyone who wants to learn it.

TheaetetusYou seem to me to mean Protagoras’s writings on wrestling and 232e the other arts.note

StrangerAnd on many other things too, my blessed friend. But, to sum up, doesn’t the art of contradiction seem to be a capacity sufficient for disputing about everything?

TheaetetusIt certainly seems to leave almost nothing out.

StrangerThen, by the gods, my boy, do you think this is possible? Maybe you young people see it more sharply, and we older ones more dimly.

TheaetetusPossible how, and what exactly are you referring to? I don’t quite understand what you’re asking now.

StrangerWhether it’s possible for any human being to know everything.

TheaetetusOur race would be blessed indeed, Stranger, if it were.

StrangerThen how could anyone who lacks knowledge himself ever contradict someone who has it and say anything sound?

TheaetetusHe couldn’t, in any way.

StrangerThen what on earth would the wonder of the sophist’s power be?

TheaetetusThe wonder of what?

StrangerHow they’re ever able to give young people the impression that they themselves are wiser than anyone about everything. For it’s clear that if they didn’t contradict correctly, or didn’t appear to the young to do so—or if, appearing to, they didn’t seem to have any more understanding because of their disputing—then, as you said yourself, hardly anyone would pay them money and be willing to become their student in these very things.

TheaetetusHardly anyone, no.

StrangerBut as it is, people are willing?

TheaetetusVery much so.

StrangerBecause, I suppose, the sophists seem to have knowledge themselves of the things they contradict about.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerAnd they do this about everything, we say?

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerSo they appear to their students to be wise about everything.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerWithout being so—for that was shown to be impossible.

TheaetetusOf course it’s impossible.

StrangerSo the sophist has turned out to have a kind of seeming knowledge about everything, but not the truth.

TheaetetusAbsolutely. And what’s just been said about them may well be the most correct thing that has been said.

StrangerThen let’s take a clearer example to show this.

TheaetetusWhat example?

StrangerThis one. And try to pay close attention and answer carefully.

TheaetetusWhat is it?

StrangerSuppose someone claimed to know, not how to speak or contradict, but how to make and do all things together by a single art—

TheaetetusWhat do you mean, all things?

StrangerYou’re lost at the very start of what I said. You don’t understand “all things,” it seems.

TheaetetusNo, I don’t.

StrangerWell, by “all things” I mean you and me, and besides us the other animals and the trees.

TheaetetusWhat do you mean?

StrangerSuppose someone said he’d make me and you and everything else that grows—

TheaetetusWhat sort of making do you mean? You can’t be talking about a farmer, since you said he makes animals too.

StrangerI did, and the sea as well, and earth and heaven and gods and everything else besides. What’s more, he makes each of them quickly and sells them off for a tiny coin.

TheaetetusYou’re talking about some kind of game.

StrangerWell then: when someone says he knows everything and could teach it all to someone else for a small fee and in a short time, mustn’t we consider that a game?

TheaetetusSurely.

StrangerAnd do you know of any kind of game more artful or more charming than imitation?

TheaetetusNone at all. You’ve named a very large kind, gathering everything into one, and pretty much the most varied there is.

StrangerThen about someone who promises he can make everything by a single art, we know this much, I take it: by producing imitations of the things that are, which bear their names, with the art of painting, he’ll be able to fool the mindless among young children. He shows them his pictures from a distance, and they don’t notice that he isn’t, as they think, perfectly capable of actually accomplishing whatever he wants to do.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerWell then: shouldn’t we expect that there’s also another art, concerned with speech, by which it’s possible to bewitch young people who still stand far off from the truth of things—with words, through their ears—by showing them spoken images of everything? It would make what’s said seem true, and the speaker seem the wisest of all about everything.

TheaetetusWhy shouldn’t there be another art like that?

StrangerSo then, Theaetetus, isn’t it inevitable that most of those who listened back then, once enough time has passed and they’ve grown older, will run into the things that are at close quarters and be forced by their experiences to grasp them clearly? Won’t they change the judgments they formed back then, so that big things appear small and easy things hard, and all 234e the appearances in words are completely overturned by the realities they meet in action?

TheaetetusYes, at least so far as someone my age can judge. Though I suspect I’m one of those still standing far off myself.

StrangerThat’s exactly why all of us here will try, and are trying now, to bring you as close as we can without your having to go through those experiences. But about the sophist, tell me this. Is it 235a clear by now that he’s a kind of magician, an imitator of the things that are? Or are we still in doubt whether he might actually have real knowledge of all the subjects he seems able to dispute about?

TheaetetusHow could he, my friend? No, from what’s been said it’s pretty clear by now that he’s one of those who deal in play.

StrangerThen we must count him as a kind of magician and imitator.

TheaetetusOf course we must.

StrangerCome on, then. Our job now is not to let our quarry 235b get loose again. We’ve just about wrapped him in one of the netting devices that arguments use for this sort of thing, so this much at least he won’t escape.

TheaetetusWhat’s that?

StrangerBeing one of the kind of conjurers.

TheaetetusThat’s how it looks to me too, as far as he’s concerned.

StrangerThen it’s settled. We must divide the art of image-making as fast as we can and go down into it. If the sophist stands his ground against us right away, we’ll arrest him as ordered 235c by the argument, our king, hand him over to it, and show off our catch. But if he slips off somewhere among the parts of the imitative art, we’ll follow him, always dividing whichever section gives him shelter, until he’s caught. Either way, neither he nor any other kind will ever boast of having escaped the method of those who can track things down like this, both part by part and as a whole.

TheaetetusWell said. That’s how we should go about it.

StrangerFollowing the method of division we used before, 235d I think I can make out two kinds of imitation this time as well. But which of the two contains the type we’re looking for, I don’t think I can tell yet.

TheaetetusWell, first tell us, and divide them for us. What are the two you mean?

StrangerOne I see in it is the art of likeness-making. That’s chiefly when someone creates the imitation by following the proportions of the original in length, breadth and depth, 235e and also gives each part the colors that suit it.

TheaetetusWhat? Don’t all imitators try to do that?

StrangerNot those, at any rate, who sculpt or paint works on a large scale. If they reproduced the true proportions of beautiful things, you know the upper parts would look smaller than they should 236a and the lower parts larger, because we see the one from far off and the other from close up.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerSo don’t craftsmen these days say goodbye to the truth, and build into their images not the proportions that really are but the ones that will seem beautiful?

TheaetetusAbsolutely.

StrangerThen isn’t it fair to call the first kind, since it’s like the original, a likeness?

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd the part of the imitative art concerned with it should be called what we called it before, likeness-making?

TheaetetusIt should.

StrangerAnd what about this? Take something that appears to resemble the beautiful because it’s viewed from a poor vantage point, but that wouldn’t even be like what it claims to resemble if someone gained the ability to see things that size properly. What do we call it? Since it appears but doesn’t resemble, isn’t it an appearance?

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerAnd isn’t this 236c part a very large one, both in painting and in imitation as a whole?

TheaetetusOf course it is.

StrangerAnd the art that produces an appearance rather than a likeness: wouldn’t we be quite right to call it appearance-making?

TheaetetusVery much so.

StrangerThese, then, are the two kinds of image-making I meant: likeness-making and appearance-making.

TheaetetusRight.

StrangerBut the thing I was unsure about then, which of the two the sophist belongs in, I still can’t see clearly. 236d The man really is a marvel and extraordinarily hard to make out. Even now he has very neatly and cleverly taken refuge in a kind that’s baffling to track down.

TheaetetusIt looks that way.

StrangerDo you agree because you recognize it yourself? Or did the argument’s momentum, now that you’re used to it, sweep you along into agreeing so quickly?

TheaetetusWhat do you mean, and what are you getting at?

StrangerMy dear fellow, we really are in an extremely difficult 236e inquiry. This business of appearing and seeming but not being, and of saying things but not true ones, has always been full of perplexity, in the past and now. How can someone say that it’s really possible to say or judge falsehoods, and in uttering this not be caught up in contradiction? That, 237a Theaetetus, is extremely hard.

TheaetetusWhy?

StrangerThis statement has dared to assume that what is not is. Otherwise there could be no such thing as falsehood. But the great Parmenides, my boy, protested against this to us from beginning to end, back when we were boys ourselves. He said it every time, in prose and in verse: “Never shall this be forced,” he says, “that things that are not are. But as you inquire, keep your thought from this road.” 237b So we have his testimony. Best of all, though, the statement itself would show it, if it were put to a modest test. So let’s look at this first, if it’s all the same to you.note

TheaetetusTreat my part however you like. But find the best way through the argument, go ahead yourself, and lead me along that same road.

StrangerThat’s what we must do. So tell me: we do dare, I take it, to utter the phrase “what in no way is”?

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerNow suppose it weren’t for the sake of contest or play. Suppose that, in all seriousness, 237c one of our listeners had to think it over and answer what this name “what is not” should be applied to. What do we think he’d use it for, and on what sort of thing? And what would he point to for the person asking?

TheaetetusThat’s a hard question. For someone like me it’s almost completely impossible to answer.

StrangerWell, this much is clear at any rate: “what is not” mustn’t be applied to anything among the things that are.

TheaetetusHow could it be?

StrangerThen since it can’t be applied to what is, neither would anyone be right to apply it to “something.”

TheaetetusHow so?

StrangerThis too is plain to us, I suppose: we always use this word “something” of a thing that is. To say it on its own, naked as it were and cut off from all the things that are, is impossible. Isn’t it?

TheaetetusImpossible.

StrangerLooking at it this way, do you agree that whoever says something must say some one thing?

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerFor you’ll say that “something” signifies one, “a pair of somethings” two, and “some things” many.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerAnd whoever says not something must, it seems, quite necessarily say nothing at all.

TheaetetusQuite necessarily.

StrangerThen mustn’t we refuse to grant even that such a person speaks but says nothing? Mustn’t we deny that he even speaks, whoever tries to utter what is not?

TheaetetusThat would certainly put an end to the argument’s perplexity.

StrangerDon’t boast yet. There’s still more, my dear fellow, and it’s the greatest and first of the perplexities, because it concerns the very starting point of the matter.

TheaetetusWhat do you mean? Tell me, and don’t hold back.

StrangerTo what is, I suppose, some other thing that is might be added.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerBut shall we ever say it’s possible for any of the things that are to be added to what is not?

TheaetetusHow could it be?

StrangerNow, we count number as a whole among the things that are.

TheaetetusYes, if we’re to count anything at all as being.

StrangerThen let’s not even try to apply number to what is not, whether plurality or one.

TheaetetusIt seems we certainly wouldn’t be right to try, as the argument says.

StrangerThen how could anyone utter with his mouth, or even grasp at all in thought, things that are not or what is not, apart from number?

TheaetetusExplain. How so?

StrangerWhen we say “things that are not,” aren’t we trying to attach a plurality 238c of number?

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerAnd when we say “what is not,” aren’t we attaching one?

TheaetetusVery plainly.

StrangerAnd yet we say it’s neither just nor right to try to fit what is onto what is not.

TheaetetusVery true.

StrangerSo you see that it’s impossible to utter correctly, or to say, or to think what is not itself by itself. It’s unthinkable, unsayable, unutterable and inexpressible.

TheaetetusAbsolutely.

StrangerThen was I lying just now when I said I would state the greatest perplexity about it? Do we have yet another, even greater one, still to mention?

TheaetetusWhat’s that?

StrangerMy remarkable friend, don’t you see from the very things we’ve said that what is not throws even the person refuting it into perplexity? Whenever someone tries to refute it, he’s forced to contradict himself about it.

TheaetetusWhat do you mean? Put it more clearly still.

StrangerThere’s no point looking to me for greater clarity. For I 238e laid it down that what is not must share in neither one nor many. Yet just now, and again now, I’ve spoken of it as one: I say “what is not.” You do see that.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd again, a little earlier I said it was unutterable, unsayable and inexpressible. Are you following?

TheaetetusI’m following. Of course.

StrangerSo in trying to attach “is” to it, wasn’t I saying the opposite 239a of what I said before?

TheaetetusApparently.

StrangerAnd in attaching it, wasn’t I talking about it as one thing?

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd in calling it inexpressible, unsayable and unutterable, I was framing my statement as being about one thing.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerBut we say that if someone is going to speak correctly, he mustn’t define it as either one or many, or even call it anything at all. Even by that form of address it would be referred to as having the form of one.

TheaetetusAbsolutely.

StrangerWell, then, what could anyone say of me? He’d find me beaten long ago, and still now, when it comes to refuting what is not. So, as I said, let’s not look to me, as I speak, for correct speech about what is not. Come on, let’s look for it in you now.

TheaetetusWhat do you mean?

StrangerCome on, be brave and noble for us, since you’re young. Strain as hard as you can and try to utter something correct about what is not, without attaching being, or one, or numerical plurality to it.

TheaetetusI’d have to be gripped by a great and strange enthusiasm for the attempt if I tried it myself after seeing what happened to you.

StrangerWell, if you like, let’s leave you and me out of it. Until we meet someone who can do this, let’s say that the sophist has, with the utmost cunning, burrowed down into a place where there’s no getting at him.

TheaetetusThat certainly seems to be so.

StrangerSo if we say he has an appearance-making 239d art of some kind, he’ll easily seize on this use of words to get a grip on us and turn our arguments back the opposite way. When we call him an image-maker, he’ll ask what on earth we mean by an image at all. So we have to consider, Theaetetus, what answer anyone could give our young fellow to his question.

TheaetetusObviously we’ll say images in water and in mirrors, and also painted and engraved ones, and all the other things of that sort.

StrangerIt’s clear, Theaetetus, that you’ve never seen a sophist.

TheaetetusWhy’s that?

StrangerHe’ll seem to you to have his eyes shut, or to have no eyes at all.

TheaetetusHow so?

StrangerWhen you give him your answer like that, mentioning things in mirrors or in sculptures, he’ll laugh at what you say for talking to him as though he could see. He’ll pretend not to know about mirrors, 240a or water, or even sight at all, and will ask you only about what follows from your words.

TheaetetusWhat’s that?

StrangerWhat runs through all these things you called many, yet saw fit to address by one name, uttering “image” over all of them as though they were one. So speak up, and defend yourself against the man without giving any ground.

TheaetetusWell, Stranger, what would we say an image is, except another thing of the same sort, made to resemble the true one?

StrangerDo you mean another true one of the same sort, or what were you referring to by 240b “of the same sort”?

TheaetetusNot true at all. Just resembling it.

StrangerMeaning by “true” what really is?

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerWell, then: is what’s not true the opposite of what’s true?

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerSo you’re saying that what resembles is not really what is, if you’re going to call it not true.

TheaetetusBut it is, in a way.

StrangerBut not truly, you say.

TheaetetusNo, not truly. Except that it really is a likeness.

StrangerSo what we call a likeness is not really a thing that is, and yet it really is?

TheaetetusIt looks as though what is not has been woven together with what is in some such tangle, and a very strange one.

StrangerStrange? Of course it’s strange. You can see, at any rate, that even now, through this crisscrossing, the many-headed sophist has forced us to agree against our will that what is not in a way is.

TheaetetusI see it very well.

StrangerWell, then. How are we to define his art and still be able to stay in agreement with ourselves?

TheaetetusWhat do you mean? What sort of thing are you afraid of, to talk like that?

StrangerWhen we say he deceives us with his appearance, and that his art is an art of deception, will we then say that our soul judges falsely because of his art? Or what will we say?

TheaetetusThat. What else could we say?

StrangerAnd false judgment, in turn, will be a judgment of things opposite to the things that are, or what?

TheaetetusYes. Opposite.

StrangerSo you’re saying that false judgment judges things that are not?

TheaetetusIt must.

StrangerJudging that things that are not are not, or that things that in no way are in some way are?

TheaetetusThings that are not must in some way be, if anyone is ever to be wrong about anything, even slightly.

StrangerWell, and isn’t it also judged that things that entirely are in no way are?

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd this, too, is falsehood?

TheaetetusThis too.

StrangerAnd a statement, I suppose, will be considered false in the same way 241a when it says that things that are are not, and that things that are not are.

TheaetetusHow else could it come to be false?

StrangerIn hardly any other way. But the sophist won’t admit this. How could any sensible person grant it, when what we agreed to before has since been agreed to be unutterable, unsayable, inexpressible and unthinkable? Do we understand, Theaetetus, what he’s saying?

TheaetetusOf course we understand. He’ll say we’re contradicting what we said just now, since we dared to say that falsehood exists 241b in judgments and in statements. For, he’ll say, we’re forced again and again to attach what is to what is not, though we agreed just now that this was the most impossible thing of all.

StrangerYou’ve remembered correctly. But it’s time now to decide what we should do about the sophist. You see how ready to hand and how many the objections and perplexities are, if we search for him by placing him in the art of the falsehood-makers and magicians.

TheaetetusVery much so.

StrangerAnd we’ve gone through only a small part of them, though there are, 241c you might say, no end of them.

TheaetetusIt would seem impossible to catch the sophist, if that’s how things are.

StrangerWhat then? Shall we go soft and give up now?

TheaetetusI certainly don’t think we should, if we’re able to get some sort of hold on the man, even a slight one.

StrangerSo you’ll forgive me, and, as you just said, be content if we manage to wrest even a little from so strong an argument?

TheaetetusOf course I will.

TheaetetusWhat’s that?

StrangerNot to think I’m turning into a sort of parricide.

TheaetetusWhy?

StrangerBecause to defend ourselves we’ll have to put the statement of our father Parmenides to the test, and force our way to the claims that what is not, in a certain respect, is, and that what is, in turn, in a way is not.

TheaetetusIt’s apparent that this is what we have to fight out in our arguments.

StrangerApparent? Of course it is, even to a blind man, as the saying goes. 241e For unless these claims are either refuted or agreed to, hardly anyone will ever be able to talk about false statements or false judgment, whether about images, or likenesses, or imitations, or appearances themselves, or about the arts that deal with them, without making himself ridiculous by being forced to contradict himself.

TheaetetusVery true.

StrangerThat’s why we must now dare to attack our father’s statement, or else drop the matter altogether, if some reluctance stops us from doing it.

TheaetetusWell, nothing at all is going to stop us from that.

StrangerThen I’ll ask you for a third, small favor.

TheaetetusJust say it.

StrangerI said just now, I think, that I’ve always given up when it comes to refuting these things, and especially now.

TheaetetusYou did.

StrangerSo I’m afraid that because of what I said you’ll think I’m mad, turning myself up and 242b down from one moment to the next. For it’s for your sake that we’ll set about refuting the statement, if we do refute it.

TheaetetusWell, as far as I’m concerned, you won’t seem to be doing anything out of line in the least if you go on to this refutation and proof. So go ahead with confidence, at least on that score.

StrangerCome on, then. Where should one start so risky an argument? I think, my boy, that this is the road we most need to take.

TheaetetusWhich one?

StrangerFirst to examine the things that seem plain right now, 242c in case we’re somehow confused about them, yet readily agree with each other as though we had them clearly sorted out.

TheaetetusTell me more clearly what you mean.

StrangerIt seems to me that Parmenides has talked to us in rather an easygoing way. So has everyone who ever set out to decide how many the things that are are, and of what sort.

TheaetetusHow?

StrangerEach of them seems to me to be telling us a story, as if we were children. One says the things that are are three, and that some of them are at war 242d with each other at times, in some way, while at other times they become friends, marry, have children and bring up their offspring. Another says there are two, wet and dry, or hot and cold, and he sets up house for them and marries them off. Our Eleatic tribe, starting from Xenophanes and even earlier, tells its stories on the basis that what are called “all things” are one. Later, certain Ionian and Sicilian Muses realized that it’s safest to weave 242e the two together and say that what is is both many and one, and is held together by enmity and friendship.note

TheaetetusWhat’s that?

StrangerThat they looked down on us ordinary people far too much and made light of us. Without caring whether we follow what they’re saying 243b or get left behind, they each press on to their own conclusion.

TheaetetusWhat do you mean?

StrangerWhen one of them declares that many things, or one, or two, are, or have come to be, or are coming to be, and another that hot is mixed with cold, positing separations and unions somewhere else, do you, Theaetetus, for heaven’s sake, understand what they mean by any of it, at any point? When I was younger, I thought I understood precisely whenever anyone said this thing we’re now perplexed about, “what is not.” But now you see how perplexed we are about it.

TheaetetusI see.

StrangerThen perhaps we’ve got this same condition in our soul no less about what is. We claim we’re at ease about it and understand whenever someone says it, but not about the other, when in fact we’re in the same state about both.

TheaetetusPerhaps.

StrangerAnd let the same be said about the other things we mentioned earlier.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerWe’ll look into most of them later, 243d if we decide to. Right now we must look first at the greatest of them, the one that leads the rest.

TheaetetusWhich one do you mean? Or is it obvious that you’re saying we must first investigate what is, and what on earth the people who talk about it think they’re pointing to?

StrangerYou’ve followed right on my heels, Theaetetus. Yes, I’m saying that this is how we must conduct our inquiry: we question them as if they were here in person, like this: “Come now, all of you who say that everything is hot and cold, or some such pair of things. What on earth 243e is it that you’re saying about both, when you say that both and each of them are? What are we to take this ‘being’ of yours to be? Is it a third thing alongside those two, so that by your account we should suppose that the all is three, and no longer two? For surely you don’t call one of the two ‘being’ and then say that both alike are. If you did, they’d pretty well be one either way, not two.”

TheaetetusThat’s true.

Stranger“Well, then, do you want to call the pair of them ‘being’?”

TheaetetusPerhaps.

Stranger“But, my friends,” we’ll say, “even then the two would quite plainly be called one.”

TheaetetusQuite right.

Stranger“Since we’re at a loss, then, you must explain it to us properly: what on earth do you mean to signify whenever you say ‘being’? Clearly you’ve known this for a long time, while we used to think we knew and are now at a loss. So teach us this very thing first, so that we don’t imagine we understand what you’re saying when 244b the exact opposite is the case.” If we say this and make this request of these people, and of all the others who say the all is more than one, will we be striking a false note, my boy?

TheaetetusNot in the least.

StrangerAnd what about those who say the all is one? Shouldn’t we ask them, as best we can, what on earth they mean by what is?

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerThen let them answer this: “You say, I take it, that one thing alone is?” “Yes, we do,” they’ll say. Won’t they?

TheaetetusYes.

Stranger“Well, then: do you call something ‘being’?”

TheaetetusYes.

Stranger“Is it the same thing you call ‘one,’ so that you’re using two names for the same thing? Or what?”

TheaetetusWhat will their answer be to that, Stranger?

StrangerClearly, Theaetetus, for someone who has laid down this hypothesis, answering the present question, or any other question for that matter, is not the easiest thing in the world.

TheaetetusHow so?

StrangerFor one thing, it’s surely ridiculous to agree that there are two names when you’ve laid it down that there is nothing but one.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerAnd for that matter, so is accepting anyone’s claim that 244d there is a name at all. That would make no sense.

TheaetetusIn what way?

StrangerIf he posits the name as different from the thing, he’s surely speaking of two things.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd if he posits the name as the same as the thing, he’ll be forced to say either that it’s the name of nothing, or, if he says it’s the name of something, it will turn out that the name is only the name of a name, and of nothing else.

TheaetetusJust so.

StrangerAnd “the one,” being the name of one, will also turn out to be the one of the name.

TheaetetusNecessarily.

StrangerWell, then: will they say that the whole is different from the one that is, or the same as it?

TheaetetusOf course they’ll say it’s the same. In fact they do say so.

StrangerWell, if it is a whole, as Parmenides himself says (“in every direction like the bulk of a well-rounded sphere, equally balanced from the middle on every side; for it must not be any larger or any smaller here or there”), then what is, being like that, has a middle and extremities. And having these, it absolutely must have parts. Or how else could it be?

TheaetetusJust so.

StrangerYet nothing prevents what has been divided into parts from having oneness as a property over all its parts, and in this way, being all and a whole, from being one.

TheaetetusWhy not?

StrangerBut isn’t it impossible for what has these properties to be the one itself?

TheaetetusHow so?

StrangerSurely, on the correct account, what is truly one must be said to be completely without parts.

TheaetetusYes, it must.

StrangerWhereas a thing like that, made up of many parts, won’t fit that account.

TheaetetusI see.

StrangerSo will what is, by having oneness as a property, be one and a whole in that way? Or are we to deny altogether that what is is a whole?

TheaetetusThat’s a hard choice you’ve put in front of me.

StrangerYou’re absolutely right about that. If what is has the property of being one in some way, it will plainly not be the same as the one, and then all things will be more than one.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd again, if what is is not a whole by having that property, but the whole itself is, then what is turns out to fall short of itself.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerAnd by this argument, being deprived of itself, what is will be something that is not.

TheaetetusJust so.

StrangerAnd once again all things become more than one, since what is and the whole have each taken on a nature of its own, separately.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerBut if the whole doesn’t exist at all, these same consequences 245d hold for what is. On top of not being, it could never even come to be.

TheaetetusWhy is that?

StrangerWhatever has come to be has always come to be as a whole. So anyone who doesn’t count the one or the whole among the things that are must not speak of either being or coming-to-be as something that is.

TheaetetusThat seems to be entirely so.

StrangerWhat’s more, what isn’t a whole can’t have any quantity at all. If something is of some quantity, then however much it is, it must be a whole of that much.

TheaetetusAbsolutely.

StrangerAnd countless other points will come to light, each 245e carrying endless perplexities, for anyone who says that what is is either two things or one only.

TheaetetusThe ones just emerging pretty much show it. Each links on to the next, always bringing greater and harder confusion about what was said before.

StrangerWell, we haven’t gone through all those who give precise accounts of being and not-being, but let that suffice. Now we must look at those who speak about it differently, so that from all of them we may see 246a that it is no easier to say what being is than to say what not-being is.

TheaetetusThen we must move on to these people too.

TheaetetusHow so?

StrangerSome of them drag everything down to earth from heaven and the invisible, literally clutching rocks and trees in their hands. They lay hold of all such things and insist that only what offers resistance and contact 246b to the touch is. They define body and being as the same, and if any of the others says that something without a body is, they despise him utterly and refuse to listen to anything else.

TheaetetusThey’re formidable men you’re describing. I’ve run into quite a few of them myself.

StrangerThat’s why their opponents defend themselves very cautiously from somewhere up above, out of the invisible, forcefully insisting that true being is certain intelligible and bodiless forms. As for the bodies of the other side, and what those people call truth, 246c they smash them into little pieces in their arguments, and call it not being but a kind of coming-to-be that is always on the move. Between the two sides, Theaetetus, an immense battle over these questions is always going on.

TheaetetusTrue.

StrangerThen let’s take each of the two kinds in turn and get from them an account of the being they posit.

TheaetetusHow are we going to get it, then?

StrangerFrom those who place it in forms it’s easier, since they’re more civilized. From those who drag everything down into body 246d by force, it’s harder, and perhaps almost impossible. But here’s what I think we must do about them.

TheaetetusWhat?

StrangerBest of all, if it were somehow possible, would be to make them better in fact. If that can’t be done, let’s make them better in speech, supposing them willing to answer more civilly than they do now. After all, agreement from better people surely carries more authority than agreement from worse ones. But we aren’t concerned with them. We’re looking for the truth.

TheaetetusQuite right.

StrangerThen tell them, now that they’ve become better, to answer you, and interpret what they say.

TheaetetusI will.

StrangerLet them say whether they claim there’s such a thing as a mortal living creature.

TheaetetusOf course they do.

StrangerAnd don’t they agree that it’s a body with a soul?

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerCounting soul among the things that are?

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerWell, then: don’t they say that one soul is just and another unjust, one has understanding and another lacks it?

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerBut isn’t it by the possession and presence of justice that each soul comes to be like that, and by the presence of the opposites that it comes to be the opposite?

TheaetetusYes, they agree to that too.

StrangerAnd surely they’ll say that what can come to be present in something, or absent from it, is certainly something.

TheaetetusYes, they do say so.

StrangerSince, then, justice and understanding and the rest of excellence and their opposites are, and so is the soul in which they come to be, do they say that any of them is visible and tangible, or that they’re all invisible?

TheaetetusHardly any of these is visible.

StrangerAnd what about things like these? Do they say they have some kind of body?

TheaetetusHere they no longer give the same answer across the board. The soul itself, they think, has some kind of body. But when it comes to understanding and each of the other things you asked about, they’re ashamed 247c to dare either to agree that these are not among the things that are, or to insist that they’re all bodies.

StrangerClearly, Theaetetus, our men have become better. The real Sown Men and earth-born among them wouldn’t be ashamed of a single one of these points. They’d insist that whatever they can’t squeeze in their hands is, after all, nothing whatsoever.note

TheaetetusThat’s pretty much how they think.

StrangerThen let’s question them again. If they’re willing to grant that even something 247d small among the things that are is bodiless, that’s enough. For then they must tell us what it is that belongs by nature both to these things and to those that have body, so that they look to it when they say that both kinds are. Perhaps they’ll be at a loss. If something like that has happened to them, see whether they’d be willing to accept a suggestion from us and agree that what is is something like this.

TheaetetusLike what? Tell us, and we’ll soon know.

StrangerI’m saying that whatever has acquired any capacity at all, 247e whether by nature to act on anything else whatever or to be acted on, even in the slightest degree, by the most trivial thing, and even if only once, all of this really is. For I propose as a definition marking off the things that are, that they are nothing other than capacity.

TheaetetusWell, since they have nothing better to say themselves for the moment, they accept this.

StrangerGood. Perhaps later something different may appear 248a to us and to them. So, as far as they’re concerned, let this stand as agreed for now.

TheaetetusIt stands.

StrangerThen let’s turn to the others, the friends of the forms. And you interpret their side for us too.

TheaetetusI will.

StrangerYou distinguish coming-to-be from being and speak of them as separate, I take it? Don’t you?

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd you say that with the body, through perception, we commune with coming-to-be, but with the soul, through reasoning, we commune with real being. Being, you say, is always the same in the same respects, while coming-to-be is different at different times.

TheaetetusYes, we do say so.

StrangerAnd this “communing,” you finest of men: what are we to say you mean by it in both cases? Isn’t it what we described just now?

TheaetetusWhat was that?

StrangerBeing acted on or acting, which results from some capacity when things meet one another. Perhaps, Theaetetus, you can’t make out their answer to this, but I perhaps can, because I know them well.

TheaetetusSo what account do they give?

StrangerThey don’t grant us what we said just now to the earth-born about being.

TheaetetusWhat was that?

StrangerWe laid it down as an adequate definition of the things that are, didn’t we, that a thing has present in it the capacity to be acted on or to act, even in the slightest degree?

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerIn reply they say that coming-to-be has a share in the capacity to be acted on and to act, but that the capacity for neither of these fits being.

TheaetetusAnd don’t they have a point?

StrangerTo which we must reply that we need to learn from them 248d more clearly still whether they also agree that the soul knows and that being is known.

TheaetetusThey certainly do say that.

StrangerWell, then: do you say that knowing or being known is acting, or being acted on, or both? Or that one of them is being acted on and the other is the other? Or that neither of them has any part in either of these at all?

TheaetetusClearly neither has any part in either. Otherwise they’d be contradicting what they said before.

StrangerI see. They’d have to face this, at least: if knowing is 248e acting on something, then what is known must in turn be acted on. And so, on this account, being, when it is known by knowledge, is changed to the extent that it is known, since it is acted on. And that, we say, couldn’t happen to what is at rest.

TheaetetusRight.

StrangerBut tell me, by Zeus: are we really going to be so easily persuaded that change and life and soul and understanding are not present to what wholly 249a is, that it neither lives nor thinks, but stands there unchanging, solemn and holy, devoid of intelligence?

TheaetetusThat would be a terrible claim to concede, Stranger.

StrangerThen are we to say that it has intelligence but not life?

TheaetetusHow could we?

StrangerThen do we say that both of these are in it, and yet deny that it has them in a soul?

TheaetetusAnd how else could it have them?

StrangerThen are we to say that it has intelligence and life and soul, and yet, though it has a soul, stands utterly unchanging?

TheaetetusAll of that strikes me as unreasonable.

StrangerThen we must grant that what changes, and change itself, are among the things that are.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerSo it follows, Theaetetus, that if things are unchanging, there is no intelligence anywhere, in anyone, about anything.

TheaetetusQuite so.

StrangerAnd again, if we grant that all things are in motion and changing, then by this argument too we’ll remove this very thing from the things that are.

TheaetetusHow?

StrangerDo you think that what is the same, in the same respects, in the same way, and concerning the same thing, 249c could ever come about without rest?

TheaetetusNot at all.

StrangerWell, then: without these, can you see intelligence being or coming to be anywhere at all?

TheaetetusNot in the least.

StrangerAnd surely we must fight with every argument against anyone who does away with knowledge or understanding or intelligence and yet insists on any claim about anything in any way.

TheaetetusVery much so.

StrangerSo the philosopher, who prizes these things most of all, absolutely must, it seems, refuse to accept that the all is at rest, whether from those who say it is one or from those who say it is many 249d forms. And he must not listen at all to those who make what is change in every way. Instead, like children begging for both, he must say that what is, the all, is both together: everything unchanging and everything changing.note

TheaetetusVery true.

StrangerWell, then: don’t we now seem to have captured what is fairly well in our account?

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerAnd yet—dear me, Theaetetus! It seems to me that only now are we going to recognize how perplexing our inquiry into it really is.

TheaetetusHow so? What do you mean by that?

StrangerMy dear friend, don’t you realize that we’re now in the deepest ignorance about it, even though we seem to ourselves to be saying something?

TheaetetusWe do seem so to me, at any rate. But how we’ve got into that state without noticing, I really don’t see.

StrangerThen look more closely: given what we’re agreeing to now, 250a couldn’t we justly be asked the very questions we ourselves were asking earlier of those who say the all is hot and cold?

TheaetetusWhat questions? Remind me.

StrangerCertainly. And I’ll try to do it by questioning you as I questioned them then, so that we can also make some progress at the same time.

TheaetetusRight.

StrangerVery well. Don’t you say that change and rest are completely opposed to each other?

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerAnd yet you say that both of them, and each of them, equally are?

TheaetetusYes, I do.

StrangerWhen you grant that they are, do you mean that both and each are changing?

TheaetetusNot at all.

StrangerThen when you say that they both are, do you signify that they’re at rest?

TheaetetusHow could I?

StrangerSo you’re positing being in your soul as a third thing alongside these, on the grounds that rest and change are encompassed by it. And by taking them together and looking at their combination with being, you’ve said in that way that they both are?

TheaetetusIt really does look as though we divine being as some third thing, when we say that change and rest are.

StrangerSo being is not change and rest together, but something different from them.

TheaetetusSo it seems.

StrangerThen by its own nature being is neither at rest nor changing.

TheaetetusPretty much.

StrangerThen where should someone turn his thought, if he wants to establish for himself something clear about it?

TheaetetusWhere indeed?

StrangerI think there’s nowhere easy to turn any longer. If something isn’t 250d changing, how is it not at rest? And how is what is in no way at rest not changing? Yet being has now turned out, by our account, to lie outside both of these. Is that possible?

TheaetetusIt’s the most impossible thing of all.

StrangerThen here’s something it’s fair to recall at this point.

TheaetetusWhat?

StrangerThat when we were asked what on earth the name “what is not” should be applied to, we were caught in utter perplexity. Do you remember?

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerWell, are we in any less perplexity now about what is?

TheaetetusTo me, Stranger, if it’s possible to say so, we seem to be in more.

StrangerThen let this be laid down here as the full extent of our perplexity. But since what is and what is not have had an equal share of perplexity, there’s now hope that as one of them comes to light, whether more dimly or more clearly, the other will 251a come to light in the same way. And if, on the other hand, we can’t see either of them, we’ll at least push our argument through between the two of them at once, as creditably as we can.

TheaetetusGood.

StrangerThen let’s explain how it is that we call this same thing, on any given occasion, by many names.

TheaetetusSuch as what? Give me an example.

StrangerWe speak of a man, of course, and give him many further names. We attribute to him colors and shapes and sizes and vices and excellences, and in all these cases and countless others we say not only 251b that he is a man but also that he is good, and endlessly many other things. And the same goes for everything else: we suppose each thing to be one, and then we speak of it as many and by many names.

TheaetetusThat’s true.

StrangerAnd that’s how, I suppose, we’ve laid on a feast for the young, and for those among the old who’ve come late to learning. Anyone can object right away that it’s impossible for the many to be one and the one many. And they certainly enjoy not letting us call a man good, 251c but only the good good and the man man. I imagine, Theaetetus, you often meet people who take this kind of thing seriously, sometimes quite elderly people, who are dazzled by it because of how poorly stocked they are with understanding, and who even think they’ve discovered something supremely wise in this very point.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerSo that our argument may be addressed to all those 251d who have ever discussed being in any way whatever, let what we’re about to say, put in the form of questions, be addressed both to these people and to the others we’ve been discussing before.

TheaetetusWhat will that be?

StrangerAre we to attach neither being to change and rest, nor anything else to anything else, and treat them in our discussions as unblended and unable to share in one another? Or are we to bring them all together into one, as capable of combining with one another? Or some yes and some no? Of these options, 251e Theaetetus, which shall we say they would choose?

TheaetetusI have no answer to give to that on their behalf.

StrangerThen why not answer one option at a time and examine what follows in each case?

TheaetetusThat’s a good idea.

StrangerAnd let’s suppose, if you like, that first they say nothing has any power of combining with anything in any way. In that case change and rest won’t share in being at all, will they?

TheaetetusNo, they won’t.

StrangerWell then, will either of them be, if it doesn’t combine with being?

TheaetetusIt won’t.

StrangerThen that agreement has quickly turned everything upside down, it seems: the views of those who make the all change, of those who make it stand still as one, and of all who say that the things that are exist in forms that are always the same and unvarying. All of them attach being to things. Some say things really are changing, others that they really are at rest.

TheaetetusAbsolutely.

StrangerAnd what’s more, take those who sometimes put everything together and sometimes divide it. They may divide things into one and out of one into unlimitedly many, or into a limited number of elements that they then compose things from. They may suppose this happens in turns, or that it happens always. Either way, none of them would be saying anything, if there’s no blending at all.

TheaetetusRight.

StrangerAnd the people who won’t let anything be called something else by sharing in what belongs to that other thing would be pursuing the argument in the most ridiculous way of all.

TheaetetusHow?

StrangerThey’re forced, I suppose, to use “is” about everything, and “apart,” and “from the others,” and “by itself,” and countless other expressions. Since they can’t keep away from these or avoid linking them in their statements, they don’t need anyone else to refute them. They have the enemy and opponent at home, as the saying goes, and they go around carrying him with them always, muttering from inside, like that strange Eurycles.note

TheaetetusThat’s exactly right—an apt comparison, and a true one.

StrangerWell, what if we let all things have the power of combining with one another?

TheaetetusThat one even I can dispose of.

StrangerHow?

TheaetetusBecause change itself would come to a complete standstill, and rest in turn would itself change, if each of them came to belong to the other.

StrangerBut surely it’s impossible, by the strictest necessity, for change to rest and rest to change?

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerThen only the third option is left.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd one of these must be the case: either everything blends, or nothing does, or some things are willing to blend and others not.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerAnd two of them were found to be impossible.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerSo anyone who wants to answer correctly will posit the remaining one of the three.

TheaetetusAbsolutely.

StrangerThen since some things are willing to do this and others not, they’d be pretty much 253a in the same situation as letters. Some letters, after all, don’t fit together with each other, while others do.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerAnd the vowels, unlike the rest, run through all of them like a bond, so that without one of them it’s impossible for the others to fit together, one with another.

TheaetetusVery true.

StrangerSo does everyone know which letters can combine with which, or does someone who’s going to do it adequately need an art?

TheaetetusAn art.

StrangerWhich one?

TheaetetusGrammar.

StrangerAnd what about high and low notes? Isn’t it the same there? The person who has the art of recognizing which ones blend and which don’t is musical, and the one who doesn’t understand is unmusical?

TheaetetusThat’s right.

StrangerAnd we’ll find other differences of this sort with the other arts and the lack of them.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerWell then, we’ve agreed that the kinds, too, relate to one another in the same way where mixing is concerned. So mustn’t someone who’s going to show correctly which kinds harmonize with which, and which 253c won’t accept one another, make his way through the discussion with some kind of knowledge? He has to show, especially, whether there are some running through all of them that hold them together, so that they’re able to blend; and again, in divisions, whether there are others running through wholes that are responsible for the division.

TheaetetusOf course knowledge is needed—and perhaps pretty much the greatest knowledge.

StrangerThen what are we going to call this one, Theaetetus? Or, by Zeus, have we stumbled without noticing onto the knowledge that belongs to free people? Have we, in looking for the sophist, perhaps found the philosopher first?

TheaetetusWhat do you mean?

StrangerDividing by kinds, and not taking the same form for a different one, or a different one for the same—won’t we say that belongs to the knowledge of dialectic?

TheaetetusYes, we’ll say so.

StrangerThen the person who can do this adequately discerns one form extended everywhere through many, each of which lies separate; and many forms, different from one another, embraced from outside by one; and again one form connected into a unity through many wholes; and many marked off entirely apart. And this 253e is knowing how to distinguish, by kind, in what ways each thing can combine and in what ways it can’t.

TheaetetusAbsolutely.

StrangerBut you won’t grant the dialectical skill to anyone, I imagine, except the person who does philosophy purely and justly.

TheaetetusHow could anyone grant it to anyone else?

StrangerThe philosopher, then, is someone we’ll find in some such place, now and later, if we look for him. He too is hard to see 254a clearly, but the difficulty with the sophist and the difficulty with him are of different kinds.

TheaetetusHow so?

StrangerThe sophist runs off into the darkness of not-being, feeling his way around in it by long practice, and he’s hard to make out because the place is so dark. Isn’t that right?

TheaetetusIt seems so.

StrangerBut the philosopher, who always devotes himself through reasoning to the form of being, is in his turn far from easy to see, because the region is so bright. The eyes of most people’s souls 254b can’t bear to keep looking toward the divine.

TheaetetusThat’s likely to be just as true as the other.

StrangerThen we’ll look into him more clearly soon, perhaps, if we still want to. But as for the sophist, clearly we mustn’t let him go until we’ve had a good look at him.

TheaetetusYou’re right.

StrangerWell, we’ve agreed that some kinds are willing to combine with one another and others not; that some combine with a few and some with many; and that nothing prevents some, running through all of them, from having combined with them 254c all. So let’s follow the argument along by looking at the next point this way. We won’t take all the forms, so as not to be confused among so many. Instead we’ll pick out some of those called greatest and look first at what each of them is like, and then at how they stand with regard to their power of combining with one another. That way, even if we can’t grasp being and not-being with complete clarity, we at least won’t fall short of an account of them, so far as the method of our present inquiry allows—if it turns out that we’re somehow 254d permitted to get away unscathed when we say that not-being really is not-being.

TheaetetusYes, we should.

StrangerNow the greatest kinds are the ones we were just going through: being itself, rest, and change.

TheaetetusBy far.

StrangerAnd two of them, we say, don’t mix with each other.

TheaetetusDefinitely.

StrangerBut being mixes with both, since both of them are, I suppose.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerSo these come to three.

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerAnd each of them is different from the other two, and the same as itself.

TheaetetusThat’s so.

StrangerBut now what on earth have we just meant by “the same” and “the different”? Are they two kinds, distinct from the three, though always necessarily blending with them, so that we must investigate five kinds rather than three? Or, when we speak of the same 255a and the different, are we unwittingly naming one of those three?

TheaetetusPerhaps.

StrangerBut change and rest, at any rate, are neither the different nor the same.

TheaetetusHow so?

StrangerWhatever we call change and rest in common can’t be either of them.

TheaetetusWhy not?

StrangerChange would come to rest, and rest in turn would change. Whichever of the two came to apply to both would force the other to change into the opposite of its own 255b nature, since it would share in its opposite.

TheaetetusExactly.

StrangerYet both of them do share in the same and the different.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerThen let’s not say that change is the same or the different, nor that rest is, either.

TheaetetusNo, let’s not.

StrangerBut should we think of being and the same as one thing?

TheaetetusPerhaps.

StrangerBut if being and the same signify nothing different, then when we say again that change and rest both are, 255c we’ll be calling them both the same, on the grounds that they are.

TheaetetusBut that’s impossible.

StrangerSo it’s impossible for the same and being to be one.

TheaetetusPretty much.

StrangerShall we posit the same, then, as a fourth, in addition to the three forms?

TheaetetusCertainly.

StrangerAnd what about the different? Should we call it a fifth? Or should we think of it and being as two names for a single kind?

TheaetetusMaybe.

StrangerBut I think you’ll agree that among the things that are, some are spoken of themselves by themselves, others always in relation to other things.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerAnd the different is always in relation to something different, isn’t it?

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerThat wouldn’t be so if being and the different weren’t very far apart. If the different shared in both forms, as being does, then there would sometimes be something different that wasn’t different in relation to something different. But as it is, we simply find that whatever is different is necessarily what it is in relation to something different.

TheaetetusThat’s just how it is.

StrangerSo we must say that the nature of the different is a fifth, one of the 255e forms we’re picking out.

TheaetetusYes.

StrangerAnd we’ll say that it pervades all of them. Each one is different from the others not because of its own nature, but because it shares in the form of the different.

TheaetetusAbsolutely.

StrangerThen let’s put it this way about the five, taking them up one at a time.

TheaetetusHow?

StrangerFirst, change: it’s altogether different from rest. Or how do we put it?

TheaetetusThat way.

StrangerSo it is not rest.

TheaetetusNot at all.

StrangerBut it is, because it shares in being.

TheaetetusIt is.

StrangerAnd again, change is different from the same.

TheaetetusPretty much.

StrangerSo it is not the same.

TheaetetusNo, it isn’t.

StrangerAnd yet it was the same, because everything in turn shares in the same.

TheaetetusVery much so.

StrangerSo we must agree, without being troubled by it, that change is the same and not the same. When we call it the same and not the same, we aren’t speaking in the same way. When we call it 256b the same, we say so because it shares in the same in relation to itself. When we call it not the same, it’s because of its combination with the different, which separates it from the same and makes it not that but different. So, again, it’s correctly called not the same.

TheaetetusAbsolutely.

StrangerSo if change itself somehow had a share in rest, there’d be nothing strange in calling it stationary?

TheaetetusQuite right, if we’re going to concede that some kinds are willing to mix with one another and others aren’t.

StrangerAnd we did reach the proof of that before our present points, when we showed by refutation that this is how things are by nature.

TheaetetusOf course.

StrangerThen let’s say it again: change is different from the different, just as it was other than the same and other than rest?

TheaetetusNecessarily.

StrangerSo by our present argument it is, in a way, not different, and also different.

TheaetetusTrue.

StrangerThen what comes next? Shall we say it’s different from the three but deny that it’s different from the fourth, 256d when we’ve agreed that there are five kinds that we set out to examine, and to examine within?

TheaetetusHow could we? It’s impossible to concede a smaller number than the one that just emerged.

StrangerSo shall we fearlessly say, and fight hard for it, that change is different from being?

TheaetetusWith no fear at all.

StrangerThen clearly change really is something that is not, and also something that is, since it shares in being?

TheaetetusAs clearly as can be.

StrangerSo not-being must necessarily be, both in the case of change and throughout all the kinds. Throughout all of them the nature of the different, 256e by making each one different from being, makes it something that is not. In the same way, then, we’ll be right to call them all things that are not; and again, because they share in being, to say that they are, and are things that are.

TheaetetusIt looks that way.

StrangerSo with each of the forms, being is many, and not-being is unlimited in number.

TheaetetusIt seems so.

StrangerThen being itself, too, must be called different from the others.

TheaetetusNecessarily.

StrangerSo being, as we see, is not in as many respects as there are other things. Since it isn’t those, it is itself one thing, while the others, unlimited in number, it in turn is not.

TheaetetusPretty much so.

StrangerThen we mustn’t be troubled by this either, since the nature of the kinds involves combination with one another. And if anyone won’t accept this, let him first win over our earlier arguments, and then win over what follows from them.

TheaetetusThat’s entirely fair.

StrangerNow let’s look at this as well.