TETUS: I dare say.

SOCRATES: But through what do you perceive all this about them? for
neither through hearing nor yet through seeing can you apprehend that
which they have in common. Let me give you an illustration of the
point at issue:--If there were any meaning in asking whether sounds and
colours are saline or not, you would be able to tell me what faculty
would consider the question. It would not be sight or hearing, but some
other.

THEAETETUS: Certainly; the faculty of taste.

SOCRATES: Very good; and now tell me what is the power which discerns,
not only in sensible objects, but in all things, universal notions, such
as those which are called being and not-being, and those others
about which we were just asking--what organs will you assign for the
perception of these notions?

THEAETETUS: You are thinking of being and not being, likeness and
unlikeness, sameness and difference, and also of unity and other numbers
which are applied to objects of sense; and you mean to ask, through
what bodily organ the soul perceives odd and even numbers and other
arithmetical conceptions.

SOCRATES: You follow me excellently, Theaetetus; that is precisely what
I am asking.

THEAETETUS: Indeed, Socrates, I cannot answer; my only notion is, that
these, unlike objects of sense, have no separate organ, but that the
mind, by a power of her own, contemplates the universals in all things.

SOCRATES: You are a beauty, Theaetetus, and not ugly, as Theodorus was
saying; for he who utters the beautiful is himself beautiful and good.
And besides being beautiful, you have done me a kindness in releasing me
from a very long discussion, if you are clear that the soul views some
things by herself and others through the bodily organs. For that was my
own opinion, and I wanted you to agree with me.

THEAETETUS: I am quite clear.

SOCRATES: And to which class would you refer being or essence; for this,
of all our notions, is the most universal?

THEAETETUS: I should say, to that class which the soul aspires to know
of herself.

SOCRATES: And would you say this also of like and unlike, same and
other?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And would you say the same of the noble and base, and of good
and evil?

THEAETETUS: These I conceive to be notions which are essentially
relative, and which the soul also perceives by comparing in herself
things past and present with the future.

SOCRATES: And does she not perceive the hardness of t