possibility, in getting
an opinion out of those who drag everything down to matter. Shall I tell
you what we must do?

THEAETETUS: What?

STRANGER: Let us, if we can, really improve them; but if this is not
possible, let us imagine them to be better than they are, and more
willing to answer in accordance with the rules of argument, and then
their opinion will be more worth having; for that which better men
acknowledge has more weight than that which is acknowledged by inferior
men. Moreover we are no respecters of persons, but seekers after truth.

THEAETETUS: Very good.

STRANGER: Then now, on the supposition that they are improved, let us
ask them to state their views, and do you interpret them.

THEAETETUS: Agreed.

STRANGER: Let them say whether they would admit that there is such a
thing as a mortal animal.

THEAETETUS: Of course they would.

STRANGER: And do they not acknowledge this to be a body having a soul?

THEAETETUS: Certainly they do.

STRANGER: Meaning to say that the soul is something which exists?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And do they not say that one soul is just, and another unjust,
and that one soul is wise, and another foolish?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And that the just and wise soul becomes just and wise by
the possession of justice and wisdom, and the opposite under opposite
circumstances?

THEAETETUS: Yes, they do.

STRANGER: But surely that which may be present or may be absent will be
admitted by them to exist?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And, allowing that justice, wisdom, the other virtues, and
their opposites exist, as well as a soul in which they inhere, do
they affirm any of them to be visible and tangible, or are they all
invisible?

THEAETETUS: They would say that hardly any of them are visible.

STRANGER: And would they say that they are corporeal?

THEAETETUS: They would distinguish: the soul would be said by them to
have a body; but as to the other qualities of justice, wisdom, and the
like, about which you asked, they would not venture either to deny their
existence, or to maintain that they were all corporeal.

STRANGER: Verily, Theaetetus, I perceive a great improvement in them;
the real aborigines, children of the dragon's teeth, would have been
deterred by no shame at all, but would have obstinately asserted that
nothing is which they are not able to squeeze in their hands.

THEAETETUS: That is pretty much their notion.

STRAN