be true.

STRANGER: Again; how can that which is not a whole have any quantity?
For that which is of a certain quantity must necessarily be the whole of
that quantity.

THEAETETUS: Exactly.

STRANGER: And there will be innumerable other points, each of them
causing infinite trouble to him who says that being is either one or
two.

THEAETETUS: The difficulties which are dawning upon us prove this; for
one objection connects with another, and they are always involving what
has preceded in a greater and worse perplexity.

STRANGER: We are far from having exhausted the more exact thinkers who
treat of being and not-being. But let us be content to leave them, and
proceed to view those who speak less precisely; and we shall find as
the result of all, that the nature of being is quite as difficult to
comprehend as that of not-being.

THEAETETUS: Then now we will go to the others.

STRANGER: There appears to be a sort of war of Giants and Gods going
on amongst them; they are fighting with one another about the nature of
essence.

THEAETETUS: How is that?

STRANGER: Some of them are dragging down all things from heaven and from
the unseen to earth, and they literally grasp in their hands rocks and
oaks; of these they lay hold, and obstinately maintain, that the things
only which can be touched or handled have being or essence, because they
define being and body as one, and if any one else says that what is not
a body exists they altogether despise him, and will hear of nothing but
body.

THEAETETUS: I have often met with such men, and terrible fellows they
are.

STRANGER: And that is the reason why their opponents cautiously defend
themselves from above, out of an unseen world, mightily contending that
true essence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas; the
bodies of the materialists, which by them are maintained to be the very
truth, they break up into little bits by their arguments, and affirm
them to be, not essence, but generation and motion. Between the
two armies, Theaetetus, there is always an endless conflict raging
concerning these matters.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Let us ask each party in turn, to give an account of that
which they call essence.

THEAETETUS: How shall we get it out of them?

STRANGER: With those who make being to consist in ideas, there will be
less difficulty, for they are civil people enough; but there will be
very great difficulty, or rather an absolute im