189
Socrates
SOC. Then false opinion is not found to exist in us either by this method or by that which we followed a little while ago.
Theaetetus
THEAET. No, it certainly is not.
Socrates
SOC. But does not that which we call by that name arise after the following manner?
Theaetetus
THEAET. After what manner?
20
Socrates
SOC. We say that false opinion is a kind of interchanged opinion, when a person makes an exchange in his mind and says that one thing which exists is another thing which exists. For in this way he always holds an opinion of what exists, but of one thing instead of another; so he misses the object he was aiming at in his thought and might fairly be said to hold a false opinion.
Theaetetus
THEAET. Now you seem to me to have said what is perfectly right. For when a man, in forming an opinion, puts ugly instead of beautiful, or beautiful instead of ugly, he does truly hold a false opinion.
Socrates
SOC. Evidently, Theaetetus, you feel contempt of me, and not fear.
Theaetetus
THEAET. Why in the world do you say that?
Socrates
SOC. You think, I fancy, that I would not attack your truly false by asking whether it is possible for a thing to become slowly quick or heavily light, or any other opposite, by a process opposite to itself, in accordance, not with its own nature, but with that of its opposite. But I let this pass, that your courage may not fail. You are satisfied, you say, that false opinion is interchanged opinion?
25
Socrates
SOC. It is, then, in your opinion, possible for the mind to regard one thing as another and not as what it is.
Theaetetus
THEAET. Yes, it is.
