Sophist

Str. Now when this arises in the soul silently by way of thought, can you give it any other name than opinion?

Theaet. Certainly not.

Str. And when such a condition is brought about in anyone, not independently, but through sensation, can it properly be called anything but seeming, or fancy?

Theaet. No.

Str. Then since speech, as we found, is true and false, and we saw that thought is conversation of the soul with itself, and opinion is the final result of thought, and what we mean when we say it seems is a mixture of sensation and opinion, it is inevitable that, since these are all akin to speech, some of them must sometimes be false.

Theaet. Certainly.

Str. Do you see, then, that false opinion and false discourse were found sooner than we expected when we feared a few moments ago that in looking for them we were undertaking an endless task?

Theaet. Yes, I see.

Str. Then let us not be discouraged about the rest of our search, either; for now that these points are settled, we have only to revert to our previous divisions into classes.

Theaet. What divisions?

Str. We made two classes of image-making, the likeness-making and the fantastic. [*](See Plat. Theaet. 235d ff)

Theaet. Yes.

Str. And we said that we did not know to which of the two the sophist should be assigned.

Theaet. You are right.

Str. And in the midst of our perplexity about that, we were overwhelmed by a still greater dizziness when the doctrine appeared which challenges everybody and asserts that neither likeness nor image nor appearance exists at all, because falsehood never exists anywhere in any way.

Theaet. True.

Str. But now, since the existence of false speech and false opinion has been proved, it is possible for imitations of realities to exist and for an art of deception to arise from this condition of mind.

Theaet. Yes, it is possible.

Str. And we decided some time ago that the sophist was in one of those two divisions of the image-making class.

Theaet. Yes.