15
But, said I, the most important matter I fear may embarrass our Plato when it is stated, just as he said that Anaxagoras was embarrassed by the name of the Moon, since he tried to claim as his own some very ancient opinion in regard to its illumination. Has not Plato said this in the Cratylus? Plato, Cratylus, 409 a.
15
Certainly, said Eustrophus, but what similarity there is I do not see.
15
Well, you know, of course, that in the Sophist Plato, Sophist, 256 c. he demonstrates that the supreme first principles are five: Being, Identity, Divergence, and fourth and fifth besides these, Motion and Rest. Cf. 428 c, infra. But in the Philebus Plato, Philebus, 23 c. he employs another method of division and affirms that the Infinite is one and the Definite a second, and from the combination of these all generation arises. The cause which makes them combine he posits as a fourth class; the fifth he has left for us to surmise, by which the things combined attain once more dissociation and disengagement. I infer that these are intended to be figurative expressions corresponding to those just mentioned, generation corresponding to being, the infinite to motion, the definite to rest, the combining principle to identity, and the dissociating principle to divergence. But if these last are not the same as the others, even so, considered either in that way or in this, his division into five different classes would still hold good.
