Sophist

Str. And so we must take courage and attack our father’s theory here and now, or else, if any scruples prevent us from doing this, we must give the whole thing up.

Theaet. But nothing in the world must prevent us.

Str. Then I have a third little request to make of you.

Theaet. You have only to utter it.

Str. I said a while ago that I always have been too faint-hearted for the refutation of this theory, and so I am now.

Theaet. Yes, so you did.

Str. I am afraid that on account of what I have said you will think I am mad because I have at once reversed my position. You see it is for your sake that I am going to undertake the refutation, if I succeed in it.

Theaet. I certainly shall not think you are doing anything improper if you proceed to your refutation and proof; so go ahead boldly, so far as that is concerned.

Str. Well, what would be a good beginning of a perilous argument? Ah, my boy, I believe the way we certainly must take is this.

Theaet. What way?

Str. We must first examine the points which now seem clear, lest we may have fallen into some confusion about them and may therefore carelessly agree with one another, thinking that we are judging correctly.

Theaet. Express your meaning more clearly.

Str. It seems to me that Parmenides and all who ever undertook a critical definition of the number and nature of realities have talked to us rather carelessly.

Theaet. How so?

Str. Every one of them seems to tell us a story, as if we were children. One says there are three principles, that some of them are sometimes waging a sort of war with each other, and sometimes become friends and marry and have children and bring them up; and another says there are two, wet and dry or hot and cold, which he settles together and unites in marriage. [*](This refers apparently to Pherecydes and the early lonians.) And the Eleatic sect in our region, beginning with Xenophanes and even earlier, have their story that all things, as they are called, are really one. Then some Ionian [*](Heracleitus and his followers.) and later some Sicilian [*](Empedocles and his disciples.) Muses reflected that it was safest to combine the two tales and to say that being is many and one, and is (or are) held together by enmity and friendship.