Sophist
STRANGER: Then, as would appear, the opposition of a part of the other,
and of a part of being, to one another, is, if I may venture to say so,
as truly essence as being itself, and implies not the opposite of being,
but only what is other than being.
THEAETETUS: Beyond question.
STRANGER: What then shall we call it?
THEAETETUS: Clearly, not-being; and this is the very nature for which
the Sophist compelled us to search.
STRANGER: And has not this, as you were saying, as real an existence
as any other class? May I not say with confidence that not-being has an
assured existence, and a nature of its own? Just as the great was found
to be great and the beautiful beautiful, and the not-great not-great,
and the not-beautiful not-beautiful, in the same manner not-being has
been found to be and is not-being, and is to be reckoned one among the
many classes of being. Do you, Theaetetus, still feel any doubt of this?
THEAETETUS: None whatever.
STRANGER: Do you observe that our scepticism has carried us beyond the
range of Parmenides' prohibition?
THEAETETUS: In what?
STRANGER: We have advanced to a further point, and shown him more than
he forbad us to investigate.
THEAETETUS: How is that?
STRANGER: Why, because he says--
'Not-being never is, and do thou keep thy thoughts from this way of
enquiry.'
THEAETETUS: Yes, he says so.
STRANGER: Whereas, we have not only proved that things which are not
are, but we have shown what form of being not-being is; for we have
shown that the nature of the other is, and is distributed over all
things in their relations to one another, and whatever part of the other
is contrasted with being, this is precisely what we have ventured to
call not-being.
THEAETETUS: And surely, Stranger, we were quite right.
STRANGER: Let not any one say, then, that while affirming the opposition
of not-being to being, we still assert the being of not-being; for as to
whether there is an opposite of being, to that enquiry we have long
said good-bye--it may or may not be, and may or may not be capable of
definition. But as touching our present account of not-being, let a man
either convince us of error, or, so long as he cannot, he too must say,
as we are saying, that there is a communion of classes, and that
being, and difference or other, traverse all things and mutually
interpenetrate, so that the other partakes of being, and by reason of
this participation is, and yet is not that of which it partakes, but
other, and being other than being, it is clearly a necessity that
not-being should be. And again, being, through partaking of the other,
becomes a class other than the remaining classes, and being other than
all of them, is not each one of them, and is not all the rest, so that
undoubtedly there are thousands upon thousands of cases in which
being is not, and all other things, whether regarded individually or
collectively, in many respects are, and in many respects are not.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And he who is sceptical of this contradiction, must think how
he can find something better to say; or if he sees a puzzle, and his
pleasure is to drag words this way and that, the argument will prove to
him, that he is not making a worthy use of his faculties; for there is
no charm in such puzzles, and there is no difficulty in detecting them;
but we can tell him of something else the pursuit of which is noble and
also difficult.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: A thing of which I have already spoken;--letting alone these
puzzles as involving no difficulty, he should be able to follow and
criticize in detail every argument, and when a man says that the same is
in a manner other, or that other is the same, to understand and refute
him from his own point of view, and in the same respect in which he
asserts either of these affections. But to show that somehow and in some
sense the same is other, or the other same, or the great small, or
the like unlike; and to delight in always bringing forward such
contradictions, is no real refutation, but is clearly the new-born babe
of some one who is only beginning to approach the problem of being.
THEAETETUS: To be sure.
STRANGER: For certainly, my friend, the attempt to separate all
existences from one another is a barbarism and utterly unworthy of an
educated or philosophical mind.
THEAETETUS: Why so?
STRANGER: The attempt at universal separation is the final annihilation
of all reasoning; for only by the union of conceptions with one another
do we attain to discourse of reason.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And, observe that we were only just in time in making a
resistance to such separatists, and compelling them to admit that one
thing mingles with another.
THEAETETUS: Why so?
STRANGER: Why, that we might be able to assert discourse to be a kind of
being; for if we could not, the worst of all consequences would follow;
we should have no philosophy. Moreover, the necessity for determining
the nature of discourse presses upon us at this moment; if utterly
deprived of it, we could no more hold discourse; and deprived of it we
should be if we admitted that there was no admixture of natures at all.
THEAETETUS: Very true. But I do not understand why at this moment we
must determine the nature of discourse.
STRANGER: Perhaps you will see more clearly by the help of the following
explanation.
THEAETETUS: What explanation?
STRANGER: Not-being has been acknowledged by us to be one among many
classes diffused over all being.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And thence arises the question, whether not-being mingles with
opinion and language.
THEAETETUS: How so?
STRANGER: If not-being has no part in the proposition, then all things
must be true; but if not-being has a part, then false opinion and false
speech are possible, for to think or to say what is not--is falsehood,
which thus arises in the region of thought and in speech.
THEAETETUS: That is quite true.
STRANGER: And where there is falsehood surely there must be deceit.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And if there is deceit, then all things must be full of idols
and images and fancies.
THEAETETUS: To be sure.
STRANGER: Into that region the Sophist, as we said, made his escape,
and, when he had got there, denied the very possibility of falsehood;
no one, he argued, either conceived or uttered falsehood, inasmuch as
not-being did not in any way partake of being.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And now, not-being has been shown to partake of being, and
therefore he will not continue fighting in this direction, but he will
probably say that some ideas partake of not-being, and some not, and
that language and opinion are of the non-partaking class; and he will
still fight to the death against the existence of the image-making and
phantastic art, in which we have placed him, because, as he will say,
opinion and language do not partake of not-being, and unless this
participation exists, there can be no such thing as falsehood. And, with
the view of meeting this evasion, we must begin by enquiring into the
nature of language, opinion, and imagination, in order that when we
find them we may find also that they have communion with not-being, and,
having made out the connexion of them, may thus prove that falsehood
exists; and therein we will imprison the Sophist, if he deserves it, or,
if not, we will let him go again and look for him in another class.
THEAETETUS: Certainly, Stranger, there appears to be truth in what
was said about the Sophist at first, that he was of a class not easily
caught, for he seems to have abundance of defences, which he throws up,
and which must every one of them be stormed before we can reach the man
himself. And even now, we have with difficulty got through his first
defence, which is the not-being of not-being, and lo! here is another;
for we have still to show that falsehood exists in the sphere of
language and opinion, and there will be another and another line of
defence without end.
STRANGER: Any one, Theaetetus, who is able to advance even a little
ought to be of good cheer, for what would he who is dispirited at a
little progress do, if he were making none at all, or even undergoing
a repulse? Such a faint heart, as the proverb says, will never take a
city: but now that we have succeeded thus far, the citadel is ours, and
what remains is easier.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: Then, as I was saying, let us first of all obtain a conception
of language and opinion, in order that we may have clearer grounds for
determining, whether not-being has any concern with them, or whether
they are both always true, and neither of them ever false.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Then, now, let us speak of names, as before we were speaking
of ideas and letters; for that is the direction in which the answer may
be expected.
THEAETETUS: And what is the question at issue about names?
STRANGER: The question at issue is whether all names may be connected
with one another, or none, or only some of them.
THEAETETUS: Clearly the last is true.
STRANGER: I understand you to say that words which have a meaning when
in sequence may be connected, but that words which have no meaning when
in sequence cannot be connected?
THEAETETUS: What are you saying?
STRANGER: What I thought that you intended when you gave your assent;
for there are two sorts of intimation of being which are given by the
voice.
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: One of them is called nouns, and the other verbs.
THEAETETUS: Describe them.
STRANGER: That which denotes action we call a verb.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And the other, which is an articulate mark set on those who do
the actions, we call a noun.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: A succession of nouns only is not a sentence, any more than of
verbs without nouns.
THEAETETUS: I do not understand you.
STRANGER: I see that when you gave your assent you had something else
in your mind. But what I intended to say was, that a mere succession of
nouns or of verbs is not discourse.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean?
STRANGER: I mean that words like 'walks,' 'runs,' 'sleeps,' or any other
words which denote action, however many of them you string together, do
not make discourse.
THEAETETUS: How can they?
STRANGER: Or, again, when you say 'lion,' 'stag,' 'horse,' or any
other words which denote agents--neither in this way of stringing words
together do you attain to discourse; for there is no expression of
action or inaction, or of the existence of existence or non-existence
indicated by the sounds, until verbs are mingled with nouns; then the
words fit, and the smallest combination of them forms language, and is
the simplest and least form of discourse.
THEAETETUS: Again I ask, What do you mean?
STRANGER: When any one says 'A man learns,' should you not call this the
simplest and least of sentences?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: Yes, for he now arrives at the point of giving an intimation
about something which is, or is becoming, or has become, or will be.
And he not only names, but he does something, by connecting verbs with
nouns; and therefore we say that he discourses, and to this connexion of
words we give the name of discourse.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And as there are some things which fit one another, and other
things which do not fit, so there are some vocal signs which do, and
others which do not, combine and form discourse.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: There is another small matter.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: A sentence must and cannot help having a subject.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And must be of a certain quality.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And now let us mind what we are about.