same thing, e.g. white, good, tall, to man; out of which
tyros old and young derive such a feast of amusement. Their meagre minds
refuse to predicate anything of anything; they say that good is good,
and man is man; and that to affirm one of the other would be making
the many one and the one many. Let us place them in a class with our
previous opponents, and interrogate both of them at once. Shall we
assume (1) that being and rest and motion, and all other things,
are incommunicable with one another? or (2) that they all have
indiscriminate communion? or (3) that there is communion of some and not
of others? And we will consider the first hypothesis first of all.

(1) If we suppose the universal separation of kinds, all theories alike
are swept away; the patrons of a single principle of rest or of motion,
or of a plurality of immutable ideas--all alike have the ground cut from
under them; and all creators of the universe by theories of composition
and division, whether out of or into a finite or infinite number of
elemental forms, in alternation or continuance, share the same fate.
Most ridiculous is the discomfiture which attends the opponents of
predication, who, like the ventriloquist Eurycles, have the voice that
answers them in their own breast. For they cannot help using the words
'is,' 'apart,' 'from others,' and the like; and their adversaries are
thus saved the trouble of refuting them. But (2) if all things have
communion with all things, motion will rest, and rest will move; here is
a reductio ad absurdum. Two out of the three hypotheses are thus seen to
be false. The third (3) remains, which affirms that only certain things
communicate with certain other things. In the alphabet and the scale
there are some letters and notes which combine with others, and some
which do not; and the laws according to which they combine or are
separated are known to the grammarian and musician. And there is a
science which teaches not only what notes and letters, but what classes
admit of combination with one another, and what not. This is a noble
science, on which we have stumbled unawares; in seeking after the
Sophist we have found the philosopher. He is the master who discerns
one whole or form pervading a scattered multitude, and many such wholes
combined under a higher one, and many entirely apart--he is the true
dialectician. Like the Sophist, he is hard to recognize, though for the
opposite reasons; the Sophist runs away