Complete Works (42 page)

There is another point also in which those who associate with me are like women in child-birth. They suffer the pains of labor, and are filled day and night with distress; indeed they suffer far more than women. And this pain my art is able to bring on, and also to allay.

[b] Well, that’s what happens to them; but at times, Theaetetus, I come across people who do not seem to me somehow to be pregnant. Then I realize that they have no need of me, and with the best will in the world I undertake the business of match-making; and I think I am good enough—God willing—at guessing with whom they might profitably keep company. Many of them I have given away to Prodicus;
⁵
and a great number also to other wise and inspired persons.

Well, my dear lad, this has been a long yarn; but the reason was that I have a suspicion that you (as you think yourself) are pregnant and in [c] labor. So I want you to come to me as to one who is both the son of a midwife and himself skilled in the art; and try to answer the questions I shall ask you as well as you can. And when I examine what you say, I may perhaps think it is a phantom and not truth, and proceed to take it quietly from you and abandon it. Now if this happens, you mustn’t get savage with me, like a mother over her first-born child. Do you know, people have often before now got into such a state with me as to be literally ready to bite when I take away some nonsense or other from them. They never believe that I am doing this in all goodwill; they are so far from [d] realizing that no God can wish evil to man, and that even I don’t do this kind of thing out of malice, but because it is not permitted to me to accept a lie and put away truth.

So begin again, Theaetetus, and try to say what knowledge is. And don’t on any account tell me that you can’t. For if God is willing, and you play the man, you can.

T
HEAETETUS
: Well, Socrates, after such encouragement from
you
, it would [e] hardly be decent for anyone not to try his hardest to say what he has in him. Very well then. It seems to me that a man who knows something perceives what he knows, and the way it appears at present, at any rate, is that knowledge is simply perception.

S
OCRATES
: There’s a good frank answer, my son. That’s the way to speak one’s mind. But come now, let us look at this thing together, and see whether what we have here is really fertile or a mere wind-egg. You hold that knowledge is perception?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: But look here, this is no ordinary account of knowledge you’ve come out with: it’s what Protagoras used to maintain. He said the very
[152]
same thing, only he put it in rather a different way. For he says, you know, that ‘Man is the measure of all things: of the things which are, that they are, and of the things which are not, that they are not.’ You have read this, of course?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, often.

S
OCRATES
: Then you know that he puts it something like this, that as each thing appears to me, so it is for me, and as it appears to you, so it is for you—you and I each being a man?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, that is what he says.

S
OCRATES
: Well, it is not likely that a wise man would talk nonsense. So [b] let us follow him up. Now doesn’t it sometimes happen that when the same wind is blowing, one of us feels cold and the other not? Or that one of us feels rather cold and the other very cold?

T
HEAETETUS
: That certainly does happen.

S
OCRATES
: Well then, in that case are we going to say that the wind itself, by itself, is cold or not cold? Or shall we listen to Protagoras, and say it is cold for the one who feels cold, and for the other, not cold?

T
HEAETETUS
: It looks as if we must say that.

S
OCRATES
: And this is how it appears to each of us?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: But this expression ‘it appears’ means ‘he perceives it’?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, it does.

S
OCRATES
: The appearing of things, then, is the same as perception, in [c] the case of hot and things like that. So it results, apparently, that things are for the individual such as he perceives them.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, that seems all right.

S
OCRATES
: Perception, then, is always of what is, and unerring—as befits knowledge.

T
HEAETETUS
: So it appears.

S
OCRATES
: But, I say, look here. Was Protagoras one of those omniscient people? Did he perhaps put this out as a riddle for the common crowd of us, while he revealed the
Truth
⁶
as a secret doctrine to his own pupils?

T
HEAETETUS
: What do you mean by that, Socrates? [d]

S
OCRATES
: I’ll tell you; and this, now, is certainly no ordinary theory—I mean the theory that there is nothing which in itself is just one thing: nothing which you could rightly call anything or any kind of thing. If you call a thing large, it will reveal itself as small, and if you call it heavy, it is liable to appear as light, and so on with everything, because nothing is one or anything or any kind of thing. What is really true, is this: the things of which we naturally say that they ‘are’, are in process of coming to be, [e] as the result of movement and change and blending with one another. We are wrong when we say they ‘are’, since nothing ever is, but everything is coming to be.

And as regards this point of view, let us take it as a fact that all the wise men of the past, with the exception of Parmenides, stand together. Let us take it that we find on this side Protagoras and Heraclitus and Empedocles; and also the masters of the two kinds of poetry, Epicharmus in comedy and Homer in tragedy.
⁷
For when Homer talked about ‘Ocean, begetter of gods, and Tethys their mother’, he made all things the offspring of flux and motion.
⁸
—Or don’t you think he meant that?

T
HEAETETUS
: Oh, I think he did.

[153]
S
OCRATES
: And if anyone proceeded to dispute the field with an army like that—an army led by Homer—he could hardly help making a fool of himself, could he?

T
HEAETETUS
: It would not be an easy matter, Socrates.

S
OCRATES
: It would not, Theaetetus. You see, there is good enough evidence for this theory that being (what passes for such) and becoming are a product of motion, while not-being and passing-away result from a state of rest. There is evidence for it in the fact that heat or fire, which presumably generates and controls everything else, is itself generated out of movement and friction—these being motions.—Or am I wrong in saying these are the original sources of fire?

[b] T
HEAETETUS
: Oh no, they certainly are.

S
OCRATES
: Moreover, the growth of living creatures depends upon these same sources?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, certainly.

S
OCRATES
: And isn’t it also true that bodily condition deteriorates with rest and idleness? While by exertion and motion it can be preserved for a long time?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: And what about the condition of the soul? Isn’t it by learning and study, which are motions, that the soul gains knowledge and is preserved
⁹
[c] and becomes a better thing? Whereas in a state of rest, that is, when it will not study or learn, it not only fails to acquire knowledge but forgets what it has already learned?

T
HEAETETUS
: That certainly is so.

S
OCRATES
: And so we may say that the one thing, that is, motion, is beneficial to both body and soul, while the other has the opposite effect?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, that’s what it looks like.

S
OCRATES
: Yes, and I might go on to point out to you the effect of such conditions as still weather on land and calms on the sea. I might show you how these conditions rot and destroy things, while the opposite conditions make for preservation. And finally, to put the crown on my argument, I might bring in Homer’s golden cord,
¹⁰
and maintain that he means by this simply the sun; and is here explaining that so long as the revolution [d] continues and the sun is in motion, all things are and are preserved, both in heaven and in earth, but that if all this should be ‘bound fast’, as it were, and come to a standstill, all things would be destroyed and, as the saying goes, the world would be turned upside down. Do you agree with this?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, Socrates, I think that is the meaning of the passage.

S
OCRATES
: Then, my friend, you must understand our theory in this way. In the sphere of vision, to begin with, what you would naturally call a white color is not itself a distinct entity, either outside your eyes or in [e] your eyes. You must not assign it any particular place; for then, of course it would be standing at its post; it wouldn’t be in process of becoming.

T
HEAETETUS
: But what do you mean?

S
OCRATES
: Let us follow what we stated a moment ago, and posit that there is nothing which is, in itself, one thing. According to this theory, black or white or any other color will turn out to have come into being through the impact of the eye upon the appropriate motion; and what we naturally call a particular color is neither that which impinges nor that
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which is impinged upon, but something which has come into being between the two, and which is private to the individual percipient.—Or would you be prepared to insist that every color appears to a dog, or to any other animal, the same as it appears to you?

T
HEAETETUS
: No, I most certainly shouldn’t.

S
OCRATES
: Well, and do you even feel sure that anything appears to another human being like it appears to you? Wouldn’t you be much more disposed to hold that it doesn’t appear the same even to yourself because you never remain like yourself?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, that seems to me nearer the truth than the other.

S
OCRATES
: Well now, supposing such things as size or warmth or whiteness [b] really belonged to the object we measure ourselves against or touch, it would never be found that this object had become different simply by coming into contact with another thing and without any change in itself. On the other hand, if you suppose them to belong to what is measuring or touching, this again could never become different simply because something else had come into its neighborhood, or because something had happened to the first thing—nothing having happened to itself. As it is, you see, we may easily find ourselves forced into saying the most astonishing and ridiculous things, as Protagoras would point out or anyone who undertook to expound the same views.

T
HEAETETUS
: What do you mean? What sort of ridiculous things?

[c] S
OCRATES
: Let me give you a simple example of what I mean, and you will see the rest for yourself. Here are six dice. Put four beside them, and they are more, we say, than the four, that is, half as many again; but put twelve beside them, and we say they are less, that is, half the number. And there is no getting out of that—or do you think there is?

T
HEAETETUS
: No, I don’t.

S
OCRATES
: Well now, supposing Protagoras or anyone else were to ask you this question: ‘Is it possible, Theaetetus, for any thing to become bigger [d] or more in number in any other way than by being increased?’ What is your answer to that?

T
HEAETETUS
: Well, Socrates, if I answer what seems true in relation to the present question, I shall say ‘No, it is not possible’; but if I consider it in relation to the question that went before, then in order to avoid contradicting myself, I say ‘Yes, it is.’

S
OCRATES
: That’s a good answer, my friend, by Jove it is; you are inspired. But, I think, if you answer ‘Yes’, it will be like that episode in Euripides—the tongue will be safe from refutation but the mind will not.
¹¹

T
HEAETETUS
: That’s true.

S
OCRATES
: Now if you and I were professional savants, who had already analyzed all the contents of our minds, we should now spend our superfluous [e] time trying each other out; we should start a regular Sophists’ set-to, with a great clashing of argument on argument. But, as it is, we are only plain men; and so our first aim will be to look at our thoughts themselves in relation to themselves, and see what they are—whether, in our opinion, they agree with one another or are entirely at variance.

T
HEAETETUS
: That would certainly be my aim, anyway.

S
OCRATES
: And mine. That being so, as we are not in any way pressed
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for time, don’t you think the thing to do is to reconsider this matter quietly and patiently, in all seriousness ‘analyzing’ ourselves, and asking what are these apparitions within us?—And when we come to review them, I suppose we may begin with the statement that nothing can possibly have become either greater or less, in bulk or in number, so long as it is equal to itself. Isn’t that so?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: Secondly, we should say that a thing to which nothing is added and from which nothing is taken away neither increases nor diminishes but remains equal.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, certainly.

S
OCRATES
: Thirdly, that it is impossible that a thing should ever be [b] what it was not before without having become and without any process of becoming?