Seite - 633 - in The Complete Plato

producing power or agent becomes neither heat nor whiteness but hot and white, and the like of other things. For I must repeat what I said before, that neither the agent nor patient have any absolute existence, but when they come together and generate sensations and their objects, the one becomes a thing of a certain quality, and the other a percipient. You remember? THEODORUS: Of course. SOCRATES: We may leave the details of their theory unexamined, but we must not forget to ask them the only question with which we are concerned: Are all things in motion and flux? THEODORUS: Yes, they will reply. SOCRATES: And they are moved in both those ways which we distinguished, that is to say, they move in place and are also changed? THEODORUS: Of course, if the motion is to be perfect. SOCRATES: If they only moved in place and were not changed, we should be able to say what is the nature of the things which are in motion and flux? THEODORUS: Exactly. SOCRATES: But now, since not even white continues to flow white, and whiteness itself is a flux or change which is passing into another colour, and is never to be caught standing still, can the name of any colour be rightly used at all? THEODORUS: How is that possible, Socrates, either in the case of this or of any other quality—if while we are using the word the object is escaping in the flux? SOCRATES: And what would you say of perceptions, such as sight and hearing, or any other kind of perception? Is there any stopping in the act of seeing and hearing? THEODORUS: Certainly not, if all things are in motion. SOCRATES: Then we must not speak of seeing any more than of not- seeing, nor of any other perception more than of any non-perception, if all things partake of every kind of motion? THEODORUS: Certainly not. SOCRATES: Yet perception is knowledge: so at least Theaetetus and I were saying. THEODORUS: Very true. SOCRATES: Then when we were asked what is knowledge, we no more 633