n any reasonable being ever identify that which
is infallible with that which errs?

An excellent answer, proving, I said, that we are quite conscious of a
distinction between them.

Yes.

Then knowledge and opinion having distinct powers have also distinct
spheres or subject-matters?

That is certain.

Being is the sphere or subject-matter of knowledge, and knowledge is to
know the nature of being?

Yes.

And opinion is to have an opinion?

Yes.

And do we know what we opine? or is the subject-matter of opinion the
same as the subject-matter of knowledge?

Nay, he replied, that has been already disproven; if difference in
faculty implies difference in the sphere or subject-matter, and if, as
we were saying, opinion and knowledge are distinct faculties, then the
sphere of knowledge and of opinion cannot be the same.

Then if being is the subject-matter of knowledge, something else must be
the subject-matter of opinion?

Yes, something else.

Well then, is not-being the subject-matter of opinion? or, rather, how
can there be an opinion at all about not-being? Reflect: when a man
has an opinion, has he not an opinion about something? Can he have an
opinion which is an opinion about nothing?

Impossible.

He who has an opinion has an opinion about some one thing?

Yes.

And not-being is not one thing but, properly speaking, nothing?

True.

Of not-being, ignorance was assumed to be the necessary correlative; of
being, knowledge?

True, he said.

Then opinion is not concerned either with being or with not-being?

Not with either.

And can therefore neither be ignorance nor knowledge?

That seems to be true.

But is opinion to be sought without and beyond either of them, in
a greater clearness than knowledge, or in a greater darkness than
ignorance?

In neither.

Then I suppose that opinion appears to you to be darker than knowledge,
but lighter than ignorance?

Both; and in no small degree.

And also to be within and between them?

Yes.

Then you would infer that opinion is intermediate?

No question.

But were we not saying before, that if anything appeared to be of a sort
which is and is not at the same time, that sort of thing would appear
also to lie in the interval between pure being and absolute not-being;
and that the corresponding faculty is neither knowledge nor ignorance,
but will be found in the interval between them?

True.

And in that interval there has now