being, through partaking of the other,
becomes a class other than the remaining classes, and being other than
all of them, is not each one of them, and is not all the rest, so that
undoubtedly there are thousands upon thousands of cases in which
being is not, and all other things, whether regarded individually or
collectively, in many respects are, and in many respects are not.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And he who is sceptical of this contradiction, must think how
he can find something better to say; or if he sees a puzzle, and his
pleasure is to drag words this way and that, the argument will prove to
him, that he is not making a worthy use of his faculties; for there is
no charm in such puzzles, and there is no difficulty in detecting them;
but we can tell him of something else the pursuit of which is noble and
also difficult.

THEAETETUS: What is it?

STRANGER: A thing of which I have already spoken;--letting alone these
puzzles as involving no difficulty, he should be able to follow and
criticize in detail every argument, and when a man says that the same is
in a manner other, or that other is the same, to understand and refute
him from his own point of view, and in the same respect in which he
asserts either of these affections. But to show that somehow and in some
sense the same is other, or the other same, or the great small, or
the like unlike; and to delight in always bringing forward such
contradictions, is no real refutation, but is clearly the new-born babe
of some one who is only beginning to approach the problem of being.

THEAETETUS: To be sure.

STRANGER: For certainly, my friend, the attempt to separate all
existences from one another is a barbarism and utterly unworthy of an
educated or philosophical mind.

THEAETETUS: Why so?

STRANGER: The attempt at universal separation is the final annihilation
of all reasoning; for only by the union of conceptions with one another
do we attain to discourse of reason.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And, observe that we were only just in time in making a
resistance to such separatists, and compelling them to admit that one
thing mingles with another.

THEAETETUS: Why so?

STRANGER: Why, that we might be able to assert discourse to be a kind of
being; for if we could not, the worst of all consequences would follow;
we should have no philosophy. Moreover, the necessity for determining
the nature of discourse presses upon us at this moment; if utter