Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  VISITOR: Even if you can only make a little progress, Theaetetus, you should cheer up. If you give up in this situation, what will you do some other time when you don’t get anywhere or even are pushed back? A person like that would hardly capture a city, as the saying goes. But since [c] we’ve done what you just said, my friend, the largest wall may already have been captured and the rest of them may be lower and easier.

  THEAETETUS: Fine.

  VISITOR: Then let’s take up speech and belief, as we said just now. That way we can calculate whether that which is not comes into contact with them, or whether they’re both totally true and neither one is ever false.

  THEAETETUS: All right.

  VISITOR: Come on, then. Let’s think about names again, the same way [d] as we spoke about forms and letters of the alphabet. What we’re looking for seems to lie in that direction.

  THEAETETUS: What kind of question about them do we have to answer?

  VISITOR: Whether they all fit with each other, or none of them do, or some of them will and some of them won’t.

  THEAETETUS: Anyway it’s clear that some will and some won’t.

  VISITOR: Maybe you mean something like this: names that indicate something when you say them one after another fit together, and names that [e] don’t signify anything when you put them in a row don’t fit.

  THEAETETUS: What do you mean?

  VISITOR: The same thing I thought you were assuming when you agreed with me just now—since there are two ways to use your voice to indicate something about being.

  THEAETETUS: What are they?

  VISITOR: One kind is called names, and the other is called verbs. [262]

  THEAETETUS: Tell me what each of them is.

  VISITOR: A verb is the sort of indication that’s applied to an action.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And a name is the kind of spoken sign that’s applied to things that perform the actions.

  THEAETETUS: Definitely.

  VISITOR: So no speech is formed just from names spoken in a row, and also not from verbs that are spoken without names.

  THEAETETUS: I didn’t understand that.

  VISITOR: Clearly you were focusing on something else when you agreed [b] with me just now. What I meant was simply this: things don’t form speech if they’re said in a row like this.

  THEAETETUS: Like what?

  VISITOR: For example, “walks runs sleeps,” and other verbs that signify actions. Even if somebody said all of them one after another that wouldn’t be speech.

  THEAETETUS: Of course not.

  VISITOR: Again, if somebody said “lion stag horse,” and whatever names [c] there are of things that perform actions, the series wouldn’t make up speech. The sounds he uttered in the first or second way wouldn’t indicate either an action or an inaction or the being of something that is or of something that is not—not until he mixed verbs with nouns. But when he did that, they’d fit together and speech—the simplest and smallest kind of speech, I suppose—would arise from that first weaving of name and verb together.

  THEAETETUS: What do you mean?

  VISITOR: When someone says “man learns,” would you say that’s the shortest and simplest kind of speech?

  [d] THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: Since he gives an indication about what is, or comes to be, or has come to be, or is going to be. And he doesn’t just name, but accomplishes something, by weaving verbs with names. That’s why we said he speaks and doesn’t just name. In fact this weaving is what we use the word “speech” for.

  THEAETETUS: Right.

  VISITOR: So some things fit together and some don’t. Likewise some vocal [e] signs don’t fit together, but the ones that do produce speech.

  THEAETETUS: Absolutely.

  VISITOR: But there’s still this small point.

  THEAETETUS: What?

  VISITOR: Whenever there’s speech it has to be about something. It’s impossible for it not to be about something.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And speech also has to have some particular quality.

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: Now let’s turn our attention to ourselves.

  THEAETETUS: All right.

  VISITOR: I’ll produce some speech by putting a thing together with an action by means of a name and a verb. You have to tell me what it’s about.

  [263] THEAETETUS: I’ll do it as well as I can.

  VISITOR: “Theaetetus sits.” That’s not a long piece of speech, is it?

  THEAETETUS: No, not too long.

  VISITOR: Your job is to tell what it’s about, what it’s of.

  THEAETETUS: Clearly it’s about me, of me.

  VISITOR: Then what about this one?

  THEAETETUS: What one?

  VISITOR: “Theaetetus (to whom I’m now talking) flies.”

  THEAETETUS: No one would ever deny that it’s of me and about me.

  VISITOR: We also say that each piece of speech has to have some particular quality.

  THEAETETUS: Yes. [b]

  VISITOR: What quality should we say each one of these has?

  THEAETETUS: The second one is false, I suppose, and the other one is true.

  VISITOR: And the true one says those that are, as they are, about you.26

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: And the false one says things different from those that are.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: So it says those that are not, but that they are.

  THEAETETUS: I suppose so.

  VISITOR: But they’re different things that are from the things that are about you—since we said that concerning each thing many beings are and many are not.27

  THEAETETUS: Absolutely.

  VISITOR: In the first place, the second piece of speech I said about you [c] must be one of the shortest there is, according to our definition of speech.

  THEAETETUS: We agreed to that just now, anyway.

  VISITOR: And we agreed that it’s of something.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And if it is not of you, it isn’t of anything else.

  THEAETETUS: Of course not.

  VISITOR: And if it were not of anything it would not be speech at all, since we showed that it was impossible for speech that is, to be speech that is of nothing.

  THEAETETUS: Absolutely right.

  VISITOR: But if someone says things about you, but says different things [d] as the same or not beings as beings, then it definitely seems that false speech really and truly arises from that kind of putting together of verbs and names.

  THEAETETUS: Yes, very true.

  VISITOR: Well then, isn’t it clear by now that both true and false thought and belief and appearance can occur in our souls?

  THEAETETUS: How?

  VISITOR: The best way for you to know how is for you first to grasp what they are and how they’re different from each other. [e]

  THEAETETUS: Then just tell me.

  VISITOR: Aren’t thought and speech the same, except that what we call thought is speech that occurs without the voice, inside the soul in conversation with itself?

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: And the stream of sound from the soul that goes through the mouth is called speech?

  THEAETETUS: Right.

  VISITOR: And then again we know that speech contains …

  THEAETETUS: What?

  VISITOR: Affirmation and denial.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  [264] VISITOR: So when affirmation or denial occurs as silent thought inside the soul, wouldn’t you call that belief?

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: And what if that doesn’t happen on its own but arises for someone through perception? When that happens, what else could one call it correctly, besides appearance?

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: So since there is true and false speech, and of the processes just mentioned, thinking appeared to be the soul’s conversation wi
th itself, [b] belief the conclusion of thinking, and what we call appearing the blending of perception and belief, it follows that since these are all the same kind of thing as speech, some of them must sometimes be false.

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: So you realize we’ve found false belief and speech sooner than we expected to just now. Then we were afraid that to look for it would be to attack a completely hopeless project.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: So let’s not be discouraged about what’s still left. Since these [c] other things have come to light, let’s remember the divisions by types that we made earlier.

  THEAETETUS: Which ones?

  VISITOR: We divided copy-making into two types, likeness-making and appearance-making.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And we said we were confused about which one to put the sophist in.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And in our confusion about that we plunged into even greater bewilderment, when an account emerged that disagreed with everyone, by denying that there are likenesses or copies or appearances at all, on [d] the ground that there isn’t ever any falsity in any way anywhere.

  THEAETETUS: That’s right.

  VISITOR: But now since false speech and false belief both appear to be, it’s possible for imitations of those that are to be, and for expertise in deception to arise from that state of affairs.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And we agreed before that the sophist does fall under one of the two types we just mentioned.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: Then let’s try again to take the kind we’ve posited and cut it in two. Let’s go ahead and always follow the righthand part of what we’ve [e] cut, and hold onto things that the sophist is associated with until we strip away everything that he has in common with other things. Then when we’ve left his own peculiar nature, let’s display it, especially to ourselves but also to people to whom this sort of procedure is naturally congenial. [265]

  THEAETETUS: All right.

  VISITOR: Didn’t we begin by dividing expertise into productive and acquisitive?

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And under the acquisitive part the sophist appeared in hunting, combat, wholesaling, and types of that sort.28

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: But now, since he’s included among experts in imitation, first we obviously have to divide productive expertise in two. We say imitation is a sort of production, but of copies and not of the things themselves. Is [b] that right?

  THEAETETUS: Absolutely.

  VISITOR: First of all, production has two parts.

  THEAETETUS: What are they?

  VISITOR: Divine and human.

  THEAETETUS: I don’t understand yet.

  VISITOR: If you remember how we started,29 we said production was any capacity that causes things to come to be that previously were not.

  THEAETETUS: I remember.

  VISITOR: Take animals and everything mortal, including plants and everything [c] on the earth that grows from seeds and roots, and also all lifeless bodies made up inside the earth, whether fusible or not. Are we going to say that anything besides the craftsmanship of a god makes them come to be after previously not being? Or shall we rely on the saying and the widespread belief that … ?

  THEAETETUS: That what?

  VISITOR: Are we going to say that nature produces them by some spontaneous cause that generates them without any thought, or by a cause that works by reason and divine knowledge derived from a god?

  THEAETETUS: I often shift back and forth on that from one view to the [d] other, maybe because of my age. When I’m focusing on you now, and supposing that you think they come to be by the agency of a god, that’s what I think too.

  VISITOR: Fine, Theaetetus. If we thought you were the kind of person who might believe something different in the future we’d try to use some cogent, persuasive argument to make you agree. But since I know what [e] your nature is and I know, too, that even without arguments from us it will tend in the direction that it’s pulled toward now, I’ll let the issue go. It would take too much time. I’ll assume divine expertise produces the things that come about by so-called nature, and that human expertise produces the things that humans compound those things into. According to this account there are two kinds of production, human and divine.

  THEAETETUS: Right.

  VISITOR: Since there are two of them, cut each of them in two again.

  THEAETETUS: How?

  [266] VISITOR: It’s as if you’d already cut production all the way along its width, and now you’ll cut it along its length.

  THEAETETUS: All right.

  VISITOR: That way there are four parts of it all together, two human ones related to us and two divine ones related to the gods.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: Then if we take the division we made the first way, one part of each of those parts is the production of originals. Just about the best thing to call the two parts that are left might be “copy-making.” That way, production is divided in two again.

  [b] THEAETETUS: Tell me again how each of them is divided.

  VISITOR: We know that we human beings and the other living things, and also fire, water, and things like that, which natural things come from, are each generated and produced by a god. Is that right?

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And there are copies of each of these things, as opposed to the things themselves, that also come about by divine workmanship.

  THEAETETUS: What kinds of things?

  VISITOR: Things in dreams, and appearances that arise by themselves during the day. They’re shadows when darkness appears in firelight, and [c] they’re reflections when a thing’s own light and the light of something else come together around bright, smooth surfaces and produce an appearance that looks the reverse of the way the thing looks from straight ahead.

  THEAETETUS: Yes, those are two products of divine production—the things themselves and the copies corresponding to each one.

  VISITOR: And what about human expertise? We say housebuilding makes a house itself and drawing makes a different one, like a human dream made for people who are awake.

  [d] THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: And just the same way in other cases, too, there are pairs of products of human production, that is, the thing itself, we say, and the copy.

  THEAETETUS: Now I understand better and I take it that there are two kinds of double production, divine and human in each division. One kind produces things themselves, and the other kind produces things similar to them.

  VISITOR: Let’s recall that one part of copy-making is likeness-making. The other kind was going to be appearance-making, if falsity appeared to be truly falsity and by nature one of those that are. [e]

  THEAETETUS: Yes, it was.

  VISITOR: But falsity did turn out that way, so are we going to count likeness-making and appearance-making as indisputably two forms?

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: Then let’s divide appearance-making in two again. [267]

  THEAETETUS: How?

  VISITOR: Into one sort that’s done with tools and one that uses one’s own self as the tool of the person making the appearance.

  THEAETETUS: What do you mean?

  VISITOR: When somebody uses his own body or voice to make something similar to your body or voice, I think the best thing to call this part of appearance-making is “imitating.”

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: Let’s set this part off by calling it imitation, and let’s be lazy and let the other part go. We’ll leave it to someone else to bring it together [b] into a unit and give it a suitable name.

  THEAETETUS: All right, let’s take the one and let the other go.

  VISITOR: But the right thing, Theaetetus, is still to take imitation to have two parts. Think about why.

  THEAETETUS: Tell me.

  VISITOR: Some imitato
rs know what they’re imitating and some don’t. And what division is more important than the one between ignorance and knowledge?

  THEAETETUS: None.

  VISITOR: Wasn’t the imitation that we just mentioned the kind that’s associated with knowledge? Someone who knew you and your character might imitate you, mightn’t he?

  THEAETETUS: Of course. [c]

  VISITOR: What about the character of justice and all of virtue taken together? Don’t many people who are ignorant of it, but have some beliefs about it, try hard to cause what they believe it is to appear to be present in them. And don’t they imitate it in their words and actions as much as they can?

  THEAETETUS: Very many people do that.

  VISITOR: And are they all unsuccessful at seeming to be just without being just at all? Or is the opposite true?

  THEAETETUS: Yes, the opposite.

  [d] VISITOR: I think we have to say that this person, who doesn’t know, is a very different imitator from the previous one, who does.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: Where would you get a suitable name for each of them? Isn’t it obviously hard to, just because the people who came before us were thoughtless and lazy about dividing kinds into types, and so they never even tried to divide them. That’s why we necessarily lack a good supply of names. Still, even though it sounds daring let’s distinguish them by [e] calling imitation accompanied by belief “belief-mimicry” and imitation accompanied by knowledge “informed mimicry.”

  THEAETETUS: All right.

  VISITOR: Then we need to use the former term, since the sophist isn’t one of the people who know but is one of the people who imitate.

  THEAETETUS: He certainly is.

  VISITOR: Let’s examine the belief-mimic the way people examine iron, to see whether it’s sound or has a crack in it.

  THEAETETUS: All right.

  [268] VISITOR: Well, it has a big one. One sort of belief-mimic is foolish and thinks he knows the things he only has beliefs about. The other sort has been around a lot of discussions, and so by temperament he’s suspicious and fearful that he doesn’t know the things that he pretends in front of others to know.