Seite - 649 - in The Complete Plato

true thoughts, for they have plenty of room, and having clear impressions of things, as we term them, quickly distribute them into their proper places on the block. And such men are called wise. Do you agree? THEAETETUS: Entirely. SOCRATES: But when the heart of any one is shaggy—a quality which the all-wise poet commends, or muddy and of impure wax, or very soft, or very hard, then there is a corresponding defect in the mind—the soft are good at learning, but apt to forget; and the hard are the reverse; the shaggy and rugged and gritty, or those who have an admixture of earth or dung in their composition, have the impressions indistinct, as also the hard, for there is no depth in them; and the soft too are indistinct, for their impressions are easily confused and effaced. Yet greater is the indistinctness when they are all jostled together in a little soul, which has no room. These are the natures which have false opinion; for when they see or hear or think of anything, they are slow in assigning the right objects to the right impressions—in their stupidity they confuse them, and are apt to see and hear and think amiss—and such men are said to be deceived in their knowledge of objects, and ignorant. THEAETETUS: No man, Socrates, can say anything truer than that. SOCRATES: Then now we may admit the existence of false opinion in us? THEAETETUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: And of true opinion also? THEAETETUS: Yes. SOCRATES: We have at length satisfactorily proven beyond a doubt there are these two sorts of opinion? THEAETETUS: Undoubtedly. SOCRATES: Alas, Theaetetus, what a tiresome creature is a man who is fond of talking! THEAETETUS: What makes you say so? SOCRATES: Because I am disheartened at my own stupidity and tiresome garrulity; for what other term will describe the habit of a man who is always arguing on all sides of a question; whose dulness cannot be convinced, and who will never leave off? THEAETETUS: But what puts you out of heart? SOCRATES: I am not only out of heart, but in positive despair; for I do not know what to answer if any one were to ask me:—O Socrates, have you indeed discovered that false opinion arises neither in the comparison of 649