Part 23

THEAETETUS: Why do you think so?

STRANGER: He will make believe to have his eyes shut, or to have none.

THEAETETUS: What do you mean?

STRANGER: When you tell him of something existing in a mirror, or in sculpture, and address him as though he had eyes, he will laugh you to scorn, and will pretend that he knows nothing of mirrors and streams, or of sight at all; he will say that he is asking about an idea.

THEAETETUS: What can he mean?

STRANGER: The common notion pervading all these objects, which you speak of as many, and yet call by the single name of image, as though it were the unity under which they were all included. How will you maintain your ground against him?

THEAETETUS: How, Stranger, can I describe an image except as something fashioned in the likeness of the true?

STRANGER: And do you mean this something to be some other true thing, or what do you mean?

THEAETETUS: Certainly not another true thing, but only a resemblance.

STRANGER: And you mean by true that which really is?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And the not true is that which is the opposite of the true?

THEAETETUS: Exactly.

STRANGER: A resemblance, then, is not really real, if, as you say, not true?

THEAETETUS: Nay, but it is in a certain sense.

STRANGER: You mean to say, not in a true sense?

THEAETETUS: Yes; it is in reality only an image.

STRANGER: Then what we call an image is in reality really unreal.

THEAETETUS: In what a strange complication of being and not-being we are involved!

STRANGER: Strange! I should think so. See how, by his reciprocation of opposites, the many-headed Sophist has compelled us, quite against our will, to admit the existence of not-being.

THEAETETUS: Yes, indeed, I see.

STRANGER: The difficulty is how to define his art without falling into a contradiction.

THEAETETUS: How do you mean? And where does the danger lie?

STRANGER: When we say that he deceives us with an illusion, and that his art is illusory, do we mean that our soul is led by his art to think falsely, or what do we mean?

THEAETETUS: There is nothing else to be said.

STRANGER: Again, false opinion is that form of opinion which thinks the opposite of the truth:--You would assent?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: You mean to say that false opinion thinks what is not?