Complete Works (67 page)

T
HEAETETUS
: Definitely.

V
ISITOR
: In fact, my friend, it’s inept to try to separate everything from everything else. It’s the sign of a completely unmusical and unphilosophical [e] person.

T
HEAETETUS
: Why?

V
ISITOR
: To dissociate each thing from everything else is to destroy totally everything there is to say. The weaving together of forms is what makes speech possible for us.

T
HEAETETUS
: That’s true.

V
ISITOR
: Think about what a good moment we picked to fight it out
[260]
against people like that, and to force them further to let one thing blend with another.

T
HEAETETUS
: Why a good moment?

V
ISITOR
: For speech’s being one kind among
those that are
. If we were deprived of that, we’d be deprived of philosophy—to mention the most important thing. Besides, now we have to agree about what speech is, but we’d be able to say nothing if speech were taken away from us and weren’t [b] anything at all. And it would be taken away if we admitted that there’s no blending of anything with anything else.

T
HEAETETUS
: This last thing is right, anyway. But I don’t understand why we have to agree about speech.

V
ISITOR
: Well, perhaps you’ll understand if you follow me this way.

T
HEAETETUS
: Where?

V
ISITOR
:
That which is not
appeared to us to be one kind among others, but scattered over all
those which are
.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: So next we have to think about whether it blends with belief and speech.

T
HEAETETUS
: Why?

[c] V
ISITOR
: If it doesn’t blend with them then everything has to be true. But if it does then there will be false belief and false speech, since falsity in thinking and speaking amount to believing and saying
those that are not
.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: And if there’s falsity then there’s deception.

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course.

V
ISITOR
: And if there’s deception then necessarily the world will be full of copies, likenesses, and appearances.

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course.

V
ISITOR
: We said that the sophist had escaped into this region, but that [d] he denied that there has come to be or is such a thing as falsity. For he denied that anyone either thinks or says
that which is not
, on the ground that
that which is not
never in any way has a share in being.

T
HEAETETUS
: That’s what he said.

V
ISITOR
: But now it apparently does share in
that which is
, so he probably wouldn’t still put up a fight about that. Perhaps, though, he might say that some forms share in
that which is not
and some don’t, and that speech and belief are ones that don’t. So he might contend again that copy-making [e] and appearance-making—in which we said he was contained—totally are not. His ground would be that belief and speech don’t associate with
that
which is not
, and that without this association falsity totally is not. That’s why we have to search around for speech, belief, and appearance, and first discover what they are, so that when they appear we see their association
[261]
with
that which is not
clearly. Then when we’ve seen that clearly we can show that falsity is, and when we’ve shown that we can tie the sophist up in it, if we can keep hold of him—or else we’ll let him go and look for him in another kind.

T
HEAETETUS
: What you said at the start seems absolutely true. The sophist is a hard kind to hunt down. He seems to have a whole supply of roadblocks, and whenever he throws one down in our way we have to fight through it before we can get to him. But now when we’ve barely gotten through the one about how
that which is not
is not, he’s thrown another [b] one down and we have to show that falsity is present in both speech and belief. And next, it seems, there will be another and another after that. A limit, it seems, never appears.

V
ISITOR
: Even if you can only make a little progress, Theaetetus, you should cheer up. If you give up in this situation, what will you do some other time when you don’t get anywhere or even are pushed back? A person like that would hardly capture a city, as the saying goes. But since [c] we’ve done what you just said, my friend, the largest wall may already have been captured and the rest of them may be lower and easier.

T
HEAETETUS
: Fine.

V
ISITOR
: Then let’s take up speech and belief, as we said just now. That way we can calculate whether
that which is not
comes into contact with them, or whether they’re both totally true and neither one is ever false.

T
HEAETETUS
: All right.

V
ISITOR
: Come on, then. Let’s think about names again, the same way [d] as we spoke about forms and letters of the alphabet. What we’re looking for seems to lie in that direction.

T
HEAETETUS
: What kind of question about them do we have to answer?

V
ISITOR
: Whether they all fit with each other, or none of them do, or some of them will and some of them won’t.

T
HEAETETUS
: Anyway it’s clear that some will and some won’t.

V
ISITOR
: Maybe you mean something like this: names that indicate something when you say them one after another fit together, and names that [e] don’t signify anything when you put them in a row don’t fit.

T
HEAETETUS
: What do you mean?

V
ISITOR
: The same thing I thought you were assuming when you agreed with me just now—since there are two ways to use your voice to indicate something about being.

T
HEAETETUS
: What are they?

V
ISITOR
: One kind is called names, and the other is called verbs.
[262]

T
HEAETETUS
: Tell me what each of them is.

V
ISITOR
: A verb is the sort of indication that’s applied to an action.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: And a name is the kind of spoken sign that’s applied to things that perform the actions.

T
HEAETETUS
: Definitely.

V
ISITOR
: So no speech is formed just from names spoken in a row, and also not from verbs that are spoken without names.

T
HEAETETUS
: I didn’t understand that.

V
ISITOR
: Clearly you were focusing on something else when you agreed [b] with me just now. What I meant was simply this: things don’t form speech if they’re said in a row like this.

T
HEAETETUS
: Like what?

V
ISITOR
: For example, “walks runs sleeps,” and other verbs that signify actions. Even if somebody said all of them one after another that wouldn’t be speech.

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course not.

V
ISITOR
: Again, if somebody said “lion stag horse,” and whatever names [c] there are of things that perform actions, the series wouldn’t make up speech. The sounds he uttered in the first or second way wouldn’t indicate either an action or an inaction or the being of something that is or of something that is not—not until he mixed verbs with nouns. But when he did that, they’d fit together and speech—the simplest and smallest kind of speech, I suppose—would arise from that first weaving of name and verb together.

T
HEAETETUS
: What do you mean?

V
ISITOR
: When someone says “man learns,” would you say that’s the shortest and simplest kind of speech?

[d] T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: Since he gives an indication about what is, or comes to be, or has come to be, or is going to be. And he doesn’t just name, but
accomplishes
something, by weaving verbs with names. That’s why we said he speaks and doesn’t just name. In fact this weaving is what we use the word “speech” for.

T
HEAETETUS
: Right.

V
ISITOR
: So some things fit together and some don’t. Likewise some vocal [e] signs don’t fit together, but the ones that do produce speech.

T
HEAETETUS
: Absolutely.

V
ISITOR
: But there’s still this small point.

T
HEAETETUS
: What?

V
ISITOR
: Whenever there’s speech it has to be about something. It’s impossible for it not to be about something.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: And speech also has to have some particular quality.

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course.

V
ISITOR
: Now let’s turn our attention to ourselves.

T
HEAETETUS
: All right.

V
ISITOR
: I’ll produce some speech by putting a thing together with an action by means of a name and a verb. You have to tell me what it’s about.

[263]
T
HEAETETUS
: I’ll do it as well as I can.

V
ISITOR
: “Theaetetus sits.” That’s not a long piece of speech, is it?

T
HEAETETUS
: No, not too long.

V
ISITOR
: Your job is to tell what it’s about, what it’s of.

T
HEAETETUS
: Clearly it’s about me, of me.

V
ISITOR
: Then what about this one?

T
HEAETETUS
: What one?

V
ISITOR
: “Theaetetus (to whom I’m now talking) flies.”

T
HEAETETUS
: No one would ever deny that it’s of me and about me.

V
ISITOR
: We also say that each piece of speech has to have some particular quality.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes. [b]

V
ISITOR
: What quality should we say each one of these has?

T
HEAETETUS
: The second one is false, I suppose, and the other one is true.

V
ISITOR
: And the true one says
those that are
, as they are, about you.
²⁶

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course.

V
ISITOR
: And the false one says things different from
those that are
.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: So it says
those that are not
, but that they are.

T
HEAETETUS
: I suppose so.

V
ISITOR
: But they’re different things that are from the things that are about you—since we said that concerning each thing many beings are and many are not.
²⁷

T
HEAETETUS
: Absolutely.

V
ISITOR
: In the first place, the second piece of speech I said about you [c] must be one of the shortest there is, according to our definition of speech.

T
HEAETETUS
: We agreed to that just now, anyway.

V
ISITOR
: And we agreed that it’s of something.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: And if it is not of you, it isn’t of anything else.

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course not.

V
ISITOR
: And if it were not of anything it would not be speech at all, since we showed that it was impossible for speech that is, to be speech that is of nothing.

T
HEAETETUS
: Absolutely right.

V
ISITOR
: But if someone says things about you, but says different things [d] as the same or not beings as beings, then it definitely seems that false speech really and truly arises from that kind of putting together of verbs and names.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, very true.

V
ISITOR
: Well then, isn’t it clear by now that both true and false thought and belief and appearance can occur in our souls?

T
HEAETETUS
: How?

V
ISITOR
: The best way for you to know how is for you first to grasp what they are and how they’re different from each other. [e]

T
HEAETETUS
: Then just tell me.

V
ISITOR
: Aren’t thought and speech the same, except that what we call thought is speech that occurs without the voice, inside the soul in conversation with itself?

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course.

V
ISITOR
: And the stream of sound from the soul that goes through the mouth is called speech?

T
HEAETETUS
: Right.

V
ISITOR
: And then again we know that speech contains …

T
HEAETETUS
: What?

V
ISITOR
: Affirmation and denial.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

[264]
V
ISITOR
: So when affirmation or denial occurs as silent thought inside the soul, wouldn’t you call that belief?

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course.

V
ISITOR
: And what if that doesn’t happen on its own but arises for someone through perception? When that happens, what else could one call it correctly, besides appearance?