Page - 696 - in The Complete Plato

a whole without these three? And if any one of them is wanting to anything, will that any longer be a whole? No. Then the one, as appears, will have beginning, middle, and end. It will. But, again, the middle will be equidistant from the extremes; or it would not be in the middle? Yes. Then the one will partake of figure, either rectilinear or round, or a union of the two? True. And if this is the case, it will be both in itself and in another too. How? Every part is in the whole, and none is outside the whole. True. And all the parts are contained by the whole? Yes. And the one is all its parts, and neither more nor less than all? No. And the one is the whole? Of course. But if all the parts are in the whole, and the one is all of them and the whole, and they are all contained by the whole, the one will be contained by the one; and thus the one will be in itself. That is true. But then, again, the whole is not in the parts—neither in all the parts, nor in some one of them. For if it is in all, it must be in one; for if there were any one in which it was not, it could not be in all the parts; for the part in which it is wanting is one of all, and if the whole is not in this, how can it be in them all? It cannot. Nor can the whole be in some of the parts; for if the whole were in some of 696