And you would not
accept the statement, if you were told that one man was greater or smaller than
another by a head,
but you would insist that you say only that every greater
thing is greater than another by nothing else than greatness, and that it is
greater by reason of greatness, and that which is smaller is smaller by nothing
else than smallness and is smaller by reason of smallness. For you would, I
think, be afraid of meeting with the retort, if you said that a man was greater
or smaller than another by a head, first that the greater is greater and the
smaller is smaller by the same thing, and secondly, that
the greater man is greater by a head, which is small, and
that it is a monstrous thing that one is great by something that is small. Would
you not be afraid of this?And Cebes
laughed and said, Yes, I should.Then, he continued, you would be afraid to say that ten
is more than eight by two and that this is the reason it is more. You would say
it is more by number and by reason of number; and a two cubit measure is greater
than a one-cubit measure not by half but by magnitude, would you not? For you
would have the same fear.Certainly, said he.Well,
then, if one is added to one
or if one is
divided, you would avoid saying that the addition or the division is the cause
of two? You would exclaim loudly that you know no other way by which any thing
can come into existence than by participating in the proper essence of each
thing in which it participates, and therefore you accept no other cause of the
existence of two than participation in duality, and things which are to be two
must participate in duality, and whatever is to be one must participate in
unity, and you would pay no attention to the divisions and additions and other
such subtleties, leaving those for wiser men to explain. You would distrust
your inexperience and would be afraid,
as the saying goes, of your own shadow; so you would cling to that safe
principle of ours and would reply as I have said. And if anyone attacked the
principle, you would pay him no attention and you would not reply to him until
you had examined the consequences to see whether they agreed with one another or
not; and when you had to give an explanation of the principle, you would give it
in the same way by assuming some other principle which seemed to you the best of
the higher ones, and so on until
you reached
one which was adequate. You would not mix things up, as disputants do, in
talking about the beginning and its consequences, if you wished to discover any
of the realities; for perhaps not one of them thinks or cares in the least about
these things.
They are so clever that they succeed in being well pleased with
themselves even when they mix everything up;
but if you are a philosopher, I think
you will do as I have said.
That is
true, said Simmias and Cebes together.
By Zeus, Phaedo, they were right. It seems to me that he made those matters
astonishingly clear, to anyone with even a little sense.
Certainly, Echecrates, and all who were there thought so, too.
And so do we who were not there, and are hearing about it now. But what was said
after that?
As I remember it, after all this had been admitted, and they had agreed that
each of the abstract qualities exists
and that other things which participate in these get their names from them, then
Socrates asked: Now if you assent to this, do you not, when you say that
Simmias is greater than Socrates and smaller than Phaedo, say that there is in
Simmias greatness and smallness?Yes.But, said
Socrates, you agree that the statement that Simmias is greater than
Socrates is not true as stated in those words. For Simmias is not greater than
Socrates
by reason of being Simmias, but by
reason of the greatness he happens to have; nor is he greater than Socrates
because Socrates is Socrates, but because Socrates has smallness relatively to
his greatness.True.And again, he is
not smaller than Phaedo because Phaedo is Phaedo, but because Phaedo has
greatness relatively to Simmias’s smallness.That is true.Then Simmias
is called small and great, when he is between the two,
surpassing the smallness of the one by exceeding him in
height, and granting to the other the greatness that exceeds his own
smallness. And he laughed and said, I seem to he speaking like a
legal document, but it really is very much as I say.Simmias agreed.I am
speaking so because I want you to agree with me. I think it is evident not only
that greatness itself will never be great and also small, but that the greatness
in us will never admit the small or allow itself to be exceeded. One of two
things must take place: either it flees or withdraws when
its opposite, smallness, advances toward it, or it has
already ceased to exist by the time smallness comes near it. But it will not
receive and admit smallness, thereby becoming other than it was. So I have
received and admitted smallness and am still the same small person I was; but
the greatness in me, being great, has not suffered itself to become small. In
the same way the smallness in us will never become or be great, nor will any
other opposite which is still what it was, ever become or be also its own
opposite. It either goes away or loses its existence in the change.