259–260
Stranger
Str. The complete separation of each thing from all is the utterly final obliteration of all discourse. For our power of discourse is derived from the interweaving of the classes or ideas with one another. The denial, that is to say, of all the interrelations of ideas leads to purely negative results. Examples of this are the exclusive antithesis of being and not-being and the mutual exclusion of rest and motion. The difficulty is solved at once when we recognize that positive and negative are necessarily interwoven in the nature of things, that the negative has only a relative existence and is not the opposite of the positive, but only different from it.
Theaetetus
Theaet. True.
10
Stranger
Str. Observe, then, that we have now been just in time in carrying our point against the supporters of such doctrine, and in forcing them to admit that one thing mingles with another.
Theaetetus
Theaet. What was our object?
Stranger
Str. Our object was to establish discourse as one of our classes of being. For if we were deprived of this, we should be deprived of philosophy, which would be the greatest calamity; moreover, we must at the present moment come to an agreement about the nature of discourse, and if we were robbed of it by its absolute non-existence, we could no longer discourse; and we should be robbed of it if we agreed that there is no mixture of anything with anything.
Theaetetus
Theaet. That is true enough; but I do not understand why we must come to an agreement about discourse just now.
