s well as innumerable others
which are without them; each has its kindred object,--each variety
of colour has a corresponding variety of sight, and so with sound and
hearing, and with the rest of the senses and the objects akin to them.
Do you see, Theaetetus, the bearings of this tale on the preceding
argument?

THEAETETUS: Indeed I do not.

SOCRATES: Then attend, and I will try to finish the story. The purport
is that all these things are in motion, as I was saying, and that this
motion is of two kinds, a slower and a quicker; and the slower elements
have their motions in the same place and with reference to things near
them, and so they beget; but what is begotten is swifter, for it
is carried to fro, and moves from place to place. Apply this to
sense:--When the eye and the appropriate object meet together and give
birth to whiteness and the sensation connatural with it, which could not
have been given by either of them going elsewhere, then, while the
sight is flowing from the eye, whiteness proceeds from the object which
combines in producing the colour; and so the eye is fulfilled with
sight, and really sees, and becomes, not sight, but a seeing eye;
and the object which combined to form the colour is fulfilled with
whiteness, and becomes not whiteness but a white thing, whether wood or
stone or whatever the object may be which happens to be coloured white.
And this is true of all sensible objects, hard, warm, and the like,
which are similarly to be regarded, as I was saying before, not as
having any absolute existence, but as being all of them of whatever kind
generated by motion in their intercourse with one another; for of the
agent and patient, as existing in separation, no trustworthy conception,
as they say, can be formed, for the agent has no existence until united
with the patient, and the patient has no existence until united with
the agent; and that which by uniting with something becomes an agent, by
meeting with some other thing is converted into a patient. And from
all these considerations, as I said at first, there arises a general
reflection, that there is no one self-existent thing, but everything
is becoming and in relation; and being must be altogether abolished,
although from habit and ignorance we are compelled even in this
discussion to retain the use of the term. But great philosophers tell us
that we are not to allow either the word 'something,' or 'belonging to
something,' or 'to me,' or