believe to be the height of wisdom.

THEAETETUS: Certainly, I have.

STRANGER: Then, not to exclude any one who has ever speculated at all
upon the nature of being, let us put our questions to them as well as to
our former friends.

THEAETETUS: What questions?

STRANGER: Shall we refuse to attribute being to motion and rest, or
anything to anything, and assume that they do not mingle, and are
incapable of participating in one another? Or shall we gather all into
one class of things communicable with one another? Or are some things
communicable and others not?--Which of these alternatives, Theaetetus,
will they prefer?

THEAETETUS: I have nothing to answer on their behalf. Suppose that you
take all these hypotheses in turn, and see what are the consequences
which follow from each of them.

STRANGER: Very good, and first let us assume them to say that nothing is
capable of participating in anything else in any respect; in that case
rest and motion cannot participate in being at all.

THEAETETUS: They cannot.

STRANGER: But would either of them be if not participating in being?

THEAETETUS: No.

STRANGER: Then by this admission everything is instantly overturned, as
well the doctrine of universal motion as of universal rest, and also the
doctrine of those who distribute being into immutable and everlasting
kinds; for all these add on a notion of being, some affirming that
things 'are' truly in motion, and others that they 'are' truly at rest.

THEAETETUS: Just so.

STRANGER: Again, those who would at one time compound, and at another
resolve all things, whether making them into one and out of one creating
infinity, or dividing them into finite elements, and forming compounds
out of these; whether they suppose the processes of creation to be
successive or continuous, would be talking nonsense in all this if there
were no admixture.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Most ridiculous of all will the men themselves be who want
to carry out the argument and yet forbid us to call anything, because
participating in some affection from another, by the name of that other.

THEAETETUS: Why so?

STRANGER: Why, because they are compelled to use the words 'to be,'
'apart,' 'from others,' 'in itself,' and ten thousand more, which they
cannot give up, but must make the connecting links of discourse; and
therefore they do not require to be refuted by others, but their enemy,
as the saying is, inhabits the same house with t