Page - 880 - in The Complete Plato

which is an impossibility? PROTARCHUS: Yes, and more than that, because you do not seem to be aware that none of us will let you go home until you have finished the argument. SOCRATES: Heavens! Protarchus, that will be a tedious business, and just at present not at all an easy one. For in going to war in the cause of mind, who is aspiring to the second prize, I ought to have weapons of another make from those which I used before; some, however, of the old ones may do again. And must I then finish the argument? PROTARCHUS: Of course you must. SOCRATES: Let us be very careful in laying the foundation. PROTARCHUS: What do you mean? SOCRATES: Let us divide all existing things into two, or rather, if you do not object, into three classes. PROTARCHUS: Upon what principle would you make the division? SOCRATES: Let us take some of our newly-found notions. PROTARCHUS: Which of them? SOCRATES: Were we not saying that God revealed a finite element of existence, and also an infinite? PROTARCHUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: Let us assume these two principles, and also a third, which is compounded out of them; but I fear that I am ridiculously clumsy at these processes of division and enumeration. PROTARCHUS: What do you mean, my good friend? SOCRATES: I say that a fourth class is still wanted. PROTARCHUS: What will that be? SOCRATES: Find the cause of the third or compound, and add this as a fourth class to the three others. PROTARCHUS: And would you like to have a fifth class or cause of resolution as well as a cause of composition? SOCRATES: Not, I think, at present; but if I want a fifth at some future time you shall allow me to have it. PROTARCHUS: Certainly. 880