SOPHIST by Plato - Complete text

Page 29

Str. And may we not fairly call the sort of art, which produces an appearance and not an image, phantastic art?

Theaet. Most fairly.

Str. These then are the two kinds of image making - the art of making likenesses, and phantastic or the art of making appearances?

Theaet. True.

Str. I was doubtful before in which of them I should place the Sophist, nor am I even now able to see clearly; verily he is a wonderful and inscrutable creature. And now in the cleverest manner he has got into an impossible place.

Theaet. Yes, he has.

Str. Do you speak advisedly, or are you carried away at the moment by the habit of assenting into giving a hasty answer?

Theaet. May I ask to what you are referring?

Str. My dear friend, we are engaged in a very difficult speculation - there can be no doubt of that; for how a thing can appear and seem, and not be, or how a man can say a thing which is not true, has always been and still remains a very perplexing question. Can any one say or think that falsehood really exists, and avoid being caught in a contradiction? Indeed, Theaetetus, the task is a difficult one.

Theaet. Why?

Str. He who says that falsehood exists has the audacity to assert the being of not - being; for this is implied in the possibility of falsehood. But, my boy, in the days when I was a boy, the great Parmenides protested against this doctrine, and to the end of his life he continued to inculcate the same lesson - always repeating both in verse and out of verse: -

Keep your mind from this way of enquiry, for never will you show that not - being is - Such is his testimony, which is confirmed by the very expression when sifted a little. Would you object to begin with the consideration of the words themselves?

Theaet. Never mind about me; I am only desirous that you should carry on the argument in the best way, and that you should take me with you.

Str. Very good; and now say, do we venture to utter the forbidden word "not - being"?

Theaet. Certainly we do.

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