; but there was not this difficulty with
the infinite, which also comprehended many classes, for all of them were
sealed with the note of more and less, and therefore appeared one.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And the finite or limit had not many divisions, and we readily
acknowledged it to be by nature one?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: Yes, indeed; and when I speak of the third class, understand
me to mean any offspring of these, being a birth into true being,
effected by the measure which the limit introduces.

PROTARCHUS: I understand.

SOCRATES: Still there was, as we said, a fourth class to be
investigated, and you must assist in the investigation; for does not
everything which comes into being, of necessity come into being through
a cause?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, certainly; for how can there be anything which has no
cause?

SOCRATES: And is not the agent the same as the cause in all except name;
the agent and the cause may be rightly called one?

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And the same may be said of the patient, or effect; we shall
find that they too differ, as I was saying, only in name--shall we not?

PROTARCHUS: We shall.

SOCRATES: The agent or cause always naturally leads, and the patient or
effect naturally follows it?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then the cause and what is subordinate to it in generation are
not the same, but different?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: Did not the things which were generated, and the things out of
which they were generated, furnish all the three classes?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the creator or cause of them has been satisfactorily
proven to be distinct from them,--and may therefore be called a fourth
principle?

PROTARCHUS: So let us call it.

SOCRATES: Quite right; but now, having distinguished the four, I think
that we had better refresh our memories by recapitulating each of them
in order.

PROTARCHUS: By all means.

SOCRATES: Then the first I will call the infinite or unlimited, and
the second the finite or limited; then follows the third, an essence
compound and generated; and I do not think that I shall be far wrong in
speaking of the cause of mixture and generation as the fourth.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: And now what is the next question, and how came we hither?
Were we not enquiring whether the second place belonged to pleasure or
wisdom?

PROTARCHUS: We were.

SOCRATES: And now, having determined the