Sophist Part 20

THEAETETUS: Very likely we are.

STRANGER: But, surely, motion and rest are neither the other nor the same.

THEAETETUS: How is that?

STRANGER: Whatever we attribute to motion and rest in common, cannot be either of them.

THEAETETUS: Why not?

STRANGER: Because motion would be at rest and rest in motion, for either of them, being predicated of both, will compel the other to change into the opposite of its own nature, because partaking of its opposite.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: Yet they surely both partake of the same and of the other?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: Then we must not a.s.sert that motion, any more than rest, is either the same or the other.

THEAETETUS: No; we must not.

STRANGER: But are we to conceive that being and the same are identical?

THEAETETUS: Possibly.

STRANGER: But if they are identical, then again in saying that motion and rest have being, we should also be saying that they are the same.

THEAETETUS: Which surely cannot be.

STRANGER: Then being and the same cannot be one.

THEAETETUS: Scarcely.

STRANGER: Then we may suppose the same to be a fourth cla.s.s, which is now to be added to the three others.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: And shall we call the other a fifth cla.s.s? Or should we consider being and other to be two names of the same cla.s.s?

THEAETETUS: Very likely.

STRANGER: But you would agree, if I am not mistaken, that existences are relative as well as absolute?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And the other is always relative to other?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: But this would not be the case unless being and the other entirely differed; for, if the other, like being, were absolute as well as relative, then there would have been a kind of other which was not other than other. And now we find that what is other must of necessity be what it is in relation to some other.

THEAETETUS: That is the true state of the case.

STRANGER: Then we must admit the other as the fifth of our selected cla.s.ses.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And the fifth cla.s.s pervades all cla.s.ses, for they all differ from one another, not by reason of their own nature, but because they partake of the idea of the other.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: Then let us now put the case with reference to each of the five.

THEAETETUS: How?

STRANGER: First there is motion, which we affirm to be absolutely 'other' than rest: what else can we say?

THEAETETUS: It is so.

STRANGER: And therefore is not rest.

THEAETETUS: Certainly not.

STRANGER: And yet is, because partaking of being.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Again, motion is other than the same?

THEAETETUS: Just so.

STRANGER: And is therefore not the same.

THEAETETUS: It is not.

STRANGER: Yet, surely, motion is the same, because all things partake of the same.

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: Then we must admit, and not object to say, that motion is the same and is not the same, for we do not apply the terms 'same' and 'not the same,' in the same sense; but we call it the 'same,' in relation to itself, because partaking of the same; and not the same, because having communion with the other, it is thereby severed from the same, and has become not that but other, and is therefore rightly spoken of as 'not the same.'

THEAETETUS: To be sure.

STRANGER: And if absolute motion in any point of view partook of rest, there would be no absurdity in calling motion stationary.

THEAETETUS: Quite right,--that is, on the supposition that some cla.s.ses mingle with one another, and others not.

STRANGER: That such a communion of kinds is according to nature, we had already proved before we arrived at this part of our discussion.