Plato : SOPHIST Persons of the dialogue: Theodorus - Theaetetus - Socrates - an Eleatic stranger Translated by Benjamin Jowett - 77 Pages - Greek fonts Search Plato's works / Plato Anthology / The Greek Word Library = Note by Elpenor

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Page 46

Str. To them we say - You would distinguish essence from generation?

Theaet. "Yes," they reply.

Str. And you would allow that we participate in generation, with the body, and through perception, but we participate with the soul through in true essence; and essence you would affirm to be always the same and immutable, whereas generation or becoming varies?

Theaet. Yes; that is what we should affirm.

Str. Well, fair sirs, we say to them, what is this participation, which you assert of both? Do you agree with our recent definition?

Theaet. What definition?

Str. We said that being was an active or passive energy, arising out of a certain power which proceeds from elements meeting with one another. Perhaps your cars, Theaetetus, may fail to catch their answer, which I recognize because I have been accustomed to hear it.

Theaet. And what is their answer?

Str. They deny the truth of what we were just now, saying to the aborigines about existence.

Theaet. What was that?

Str. Any power of doing or suffering in a degree however slight was held by us to be a sufficient definition of being?

Theaet. True.

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