Seite - 774 - in The Complete Plato

STRANGER: Let us now go to the friends of ideas; of their opinions, too, you shall be the interpreter. THEAETETUS: I will. STRANGER: To them we say—You would distinguish essence from generation? THEAETETUS: ‘Yes,’ they reply. STRANGER: And you would allow that we participate in generation with the body, and through perception, but we participate with the soul through thought in true essence; and essence you would affirm to be always the same and immutable, whereas generation or becoming varies? THEAETETUS: Yes; that is what we should affirm. STRANGER: Well, fair sirs, we say to them, what is this participation, which you assert of both? Do you agree with our recent definition? THEAETETUS: What definition? STRANGER: We said that being was an active or passive energy, arising out of a certain power which proceeds from elements meeting with one another. Perhaps your ears, Theaetetus, may fail to catch their answer, which I recognize because I have been accustomed to hear it. THEAETETUS: And what is their answer? STRANGER: They deny the truth of what we were just now saying to the aborigines about existence. THEAETETUS: What was that? STRANGER: Any power of doing or suffering in a degree however slight was held by us to be a sufficient definition of being? THEAETETUS: True. STRANGER: They deny this, and say that the power of doing or suffering is confined to becoming, and that neither power is applicable to being. THEAETETUS: And is there not some truth in what they say? STRANGER: Yes; but our reply will be, that we want to ascertain from them more distinctly, whether they further admit that the soul knows, and that being or essence is known. THEAETETUS: There can be no doubt that they say so. STRANGER: And is knowing and being known doing or suffering, or both, or is the one doing and the other suffering, or has neither any share in 774