venture to say so,
as truly essence as being itself, and implies not the opposite of being,
but only what is other than being.

THEAETETUS: Beyond question.

STRANGER: What then shall we call it?

THEAETETUS: Clearly, not-being; and this is the very nature for which
the Sophist compelled us to search.

STRANGER: And has not this, as you were saying, as real an existence
as any other class? May I not say with confidence that not-being has an
assured existence, and a nature of its own? Just as the great was found
to be great and the beautiful beautiful, and the not-great not-great,
and the not-beautiful not-beautiful, in the same manner not-being has
been found to be and is not-being, and is to be reckoned one among the
many classes of being. Do you, Theaetetus, still feel any doubt of this?

THEAETETUS: None whatever.

STRANGER: Do you observe that our scepticism has carried us beyond the
range of Parmenides' prohibition?

THEAETETUS: In what?

STRANGER: We have advanced to a further point, and shown him more than
he forbad us to investigate.

THEAETETUS: How is that?

STRANGER: Why, because he says--

'Not-being never is, and do thou keep thy thoughts from this way of
enquiry.'

THEAETETUS: Yes, he says so.

STRANGER: Whereas, we have not only proved that things which are not
are, but we have shown what form of being not-being is; for we have
shown that the nature of the other is, and is distributed over all
things in their relations to one another, and whatever part of the other
is contrasted with being, this is precisely what we have ventured to
call not-being.

THEAETETUS: And surely, Stranger, we were quite right.

STRANGER: Let not any one say, then, that while affirming the opposition
of not-being to being, we still assert the being of not-being; for as to
whether there is an opposite of being, to that enquiry we have long
said good-bye--it may or may not be, and may or may not be capable of
definition. But as touching our present account of not-being, let a man
either convince us of error, or, so long as he cannot, he too must say,
as we are saying, that there is a communion of classes, and that
being, and difference or other, traverse all things and mutually
interpenetrate, so that the other partakes of being, and by reason of
this participation is, and yet is not that of which it partakes, but
other, and being other than being, it is clearly a necessity that
not-being should be. And again,