Socrates
SOC. These three assumptions contend with one another in our minds when we talk about the dice, or when we say that I, who do not, at my age, either increase in size or diminish, am in the course of a year first larger than you, who are young, and afterwards smaller, when nothing has been taken from my size, but you have grown. For I am, it seems, afterwards what I was not before, and I have not become so; for it is impossible to have become without becoming, and without losing anything of my size I could not become smaller. And there are countless myriads of such contradictions, if we are to accept these that I have mentioned. You follow me, I take it, Theaetetus, for I think you are not new at such things.
Theaetetus
THEAET. By the gods, Socrates, I am lost in wonder when I think of all these things, and sometimes when I regard them it really makes my head swim.
Socrates
SOC. Theodorus seems to be a pretty good guesser about your nature. For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy, and he who said that Iris was the child of Thaumas Hes. Theog. 750 Iris is the messenger of heaven, and Plato interprets the name of her father as Wonder (θαῦμα). made a good genealogy. But do you begin to understand why these things are so, according to the doctrine we attribute to Protagoras, or do you not as yet?
