one or two corrections in what I
have been saying?

CLEINIAS: What are they?

ATHENIAN: When I spoke of the tenth sort of motion, that was not quite
correct.

CLEINIAS: What was the error?

ATHENIAN: According to the true order, the tenth was really the first
in generation and power; then follows the second, which was strangely
enough termed the ninth by us.

CLEINIAS: What do you mean?

ATHENIAN: I mean this: when one thing changes another, and that another,
of such will there be any primary changing element? How can a thing
which is moved by another ever be the beginning of change? Impossible.
But when the self-moved changes other, and that again other, and thus
thousands upon tens of thousands of bodies are set in motion, must
not the beginning of all this motion be the change of the self-moving
principle?

CLEINIAS: Very true, and I quite agree.

ATHENIAN: Or, to put the question in another way, making answer to
ourselves: If, as most of these philosophers have the audacity
to affirm, all things were at rest in one mass, which of the
above-mentioned principles of motion would first spring up among them?

CLEINIAS: Clearly the self-moving; for there could be no change in them
arising out of any external cause; the change must first take place in
themselves.

ATHENIAN: Then we must say that self-motion being the origin of all
motions, and the first which arises among things at rest as well as
among things in motion, is the eldest and mightiest principle of change,
and that which is changed by another and yet moves other is second.

CLEINIAS: Quite true.

ATHENIAN: At this stage of the argument let us put a question.

CLEINIAS: What question?

ATHENIAN: If we were to see this power existing in any earthy, watery,
or fiery substance, simple or compound--how should we describe it?

CLEINIAS: You mean to ask whether we should call such a self-moving
power life?

ATHENIAN: I do.

CLEINIAS: Certainly we should.

ATHENIAN: And when we see soul in anything, must we not do the
same--must we not admit that this is life?

CLEINIAS: We must.

ATHENIAN: And now, I beseech you, reflect--you would admit that we have
a threefold knowledge of things?

CLEINIAS: What do you mean?

ATHENIAN: I mean that we know the essence, and that we know the
definition of the essence, and the name--these are the three; and there
are two questions which may be raised about anything.

CLEINIAS: How two?

ATHENIAN: Som