Page - 776 - in The Complete Plato

STRANGER: Can you see how without them mind could exist, or come into existence anywhere? THEAETETUS: No. STRANGER: And surely contend we must in every possible way against him who would annihilate knowledge and reason and mind, and yet ventures to speak confidently about anything. THEAETETUS: Yes, with all our might. STRANGER: Then the philosopher, who has the truest reverence for these qualities, cannot possibly accept the notion of those who say that the whole is at rest, either as unity or in many forms: and he will be utterly deaf to those who assert universal motion. As children say entreatingly ‘Give us both,’ so he will include both the moveable and immoveable in his definition of being and all. THEAETETUS: Most true. STRANGER: And now, do we seem to have gained a fair notion of being? THEAETETUS: Yes truly. STRANGER: Alas, Theaetetus, methinks that we are now only beginning to see the real difficulty of the enquiry into the nature of it. THEAETETUS: What do you mean? STRANGER: O my friend, do you not see that nothing can exceed our ignorance, and yet we fancy that we are saying something good? THEAETETUS: I certainly thought that we were; and I do not at all understand how we never found out our desperate case. STRANGER: Reflect: after having made these admissions, may we not be justly asked the same questions which we ourselves were asking of those who said that all was hot and cold? THEAETETUS: What were they? Will you recall them to my mind? STRANGER: To be sure I will, and I will remind you of them, by putting the same questions to you which I did to them, and then we shall get on. THEAETETUS: True. STRANGER: Would you not say that rest and motion are in the most entire opposition to one another? THEAETETUS: Of course. STRANGER: And yet you would say that both and either of them equally 776