Page - 884 - in The Complete Plato

and wickedness of all things, and that there was in them no limit to pleasures and self-indulgence, devised the limit of law and order, whereby, as you say, Philebus, she torments, or as I maintain, delivers the soul.— What think you, Protarchus? PROTARCHUS: Her ways are much to my mind, Socrates. SOCRATES: You will observe that I have spoken of three classes? PROTARCHUS: Yes, I think that I understand you: you mean to say that the infinite is one class, and that the finite is a second class of existences; but what you would make the third I am not so certain. SOCRATES: That is because the amazing variety of the third class is too much for you, my dear friend; but there was not this difficulty with the infinite, which also comprehended many classes, for all of them were sealed with the note of more and less, and therefore appeared one. PROTARCHUS: True. SOCRATES: And the finite or limit had not many divisions, and we readily acknowledged it to be by nature one? PROTARCHUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Yes, indeed; and when I speak of the third class, understand me to mean any offspring of these, being a birth into true being, effected by the measure which the limit introduces. PROTARCHUS: I understand. SOCRATES: Still there was, as we said, a fourth class to be investigated, and you must assist in the investigation; for does not everything which comes into being, of necessity come into being through a cause? PROTARCHUS: Yes, certainly; for how can there be anything which has no cause? SOCRATES: And is not the agent the same as the cause in all except name; the agent and the cause may be rightly called one? PROTARCHUS: Very true. SOCRATES: And the same may be said of the patient, or effect; we shall find that they too differ, as I was saying, only in name—shall we not? PROTARCHUS: We shall. SOCRATES: The agent or cause always naturally leads, and the patient or effect naturally follows it? 884