the trick of his art, and why does he receive
money from his admirers? 'Because he is believed by them to know all
things.' You mean to say that he seems to have a knowledge of them?
'Yes.'

Suppose a person were to say, not that he would dispute about all
things, but that he would make all things, you and me, and all other
creatures, the earth and the heavens and the gods, and would sell them
all for a few pence--this would be a great jest; but not greater than if
he said that he knew all things, and could teach them in a short time,
and at a small cost. For all imitation is a jest, and the most graceful
form of jest. Now the painter is a man who professes to make all things,
and children, who see his pictures at a distance, sometimes take them
for realities: and the Sophist pretends to know all things, and he, too,
can deceive young men, who are still at a distance from the truth, not
through their eyes, but through their ears, by the mummery of words,
and induce them to believe him. But as they grow older, and come into
contact with realities, they learn by experience the futility of his
pretensions. The Sophist, then, has not real knowledge; he is only an
imitator, or image-maker.

And now, having got him in a corner of the dialectical net, let us
divide and subdivide until we catch him. Of image-making there are two
kinds,--the art of making likenesses, and the art of making appearances.
The latter may be illustrated by sculpture and painting, which often use
illusions, and alter the proportions of figures, in order to adapt
their works to the eye. And the Sophist also uses illusions, and
his imitations are apparent and not real. But how can anything be an
appearance only? Here arises a difficulty which has always beset the
subject of appearances. For the argument is asserting the existence
of not-being. And this is what the great Parmenides was all his life
denying in prose and also in verse. 'You will never find,' he says,
'that not-being is.' And the words prove themselves! Not-being cannot be
attributed to any being; for how can any being be wholly abstracted from
being? Again, in every predication there is an attribution of singular
or plural. But number is the most real of all things, and cannot be
attributed to not-being. Therefore not-being cannot be predicated or
expressed; for how can we say 'is,' 'are not,' without number?

And now arises the greatest difficulty of all. If not-being is
inconceivable,