gentleman who is of opinion that
there is no absolute or unchangeable idea of beauty--in whose opinion
the beautiful is the manifold--he, I say, your lover of beautiful
sights, who cannot bear to be told that the beautiful is one, and the
just is one, or that anything is one--to him I would appeal, saying,
Will you be so very kind, sir, as to tell us whether, of all these
beautiful things, there is one which will not be found ugly; or of the
just, which will not be found unjust; or of the holy, which will not
also be unholy?

No, he replied; the beautiful will in some point of view be found ugly;
and the same is true of the rest.

And may not the many which are doubles be also halves?--doubles, that
is, of one thing, and halves of another?

Quite true.

And things great and small, heavy and light, as they are termed, will
not be denoted by these any more than by the opposite names?

True; both these and the opposite names will always attach to all of
them.

And can any one of those many things which are called by particular
names be said to be this rather than not to be this?

He replied: They are like the punning riddles which are asked at
feasts or the children's puzzle about the eunuch aiming at the bat,
with what he hit him, as they say in the puzzle, and upon what the bat
was sitting. The individual objects of which I am speaking are also a
riddle, and have a double sense: nor can you fix them in your mind,
either as being or not-being, or both, or neither.

Then what will you do with them? I said. Can they have a better place
than between being and not-being? For they are clearly not in greater
darkness or negation than not-being, or more full of light and
existence than being.

That is quite true, he said.

Thus then we seem to have discovered that the many ideas which the
multitude entertain about the beautiful and about all other things are
tossing about in some region which is halfway between pure being and
pure not-being?

We have.

Yes; and we had before agreed that anything of this kind which we might
find was to be described as matter of opinion, and not as matter of
knowledge; being the intermediate flux which is caught and detained by
the intermediate faculty.

Quite true.

Then those who see the many beautiful, and who yet neither see absolute
beauty, nor can follow any guide who points the way thither; who see
the many just, and not absolute justice, and the like,--such persons