252
Stranger
Str. See how by this admission everything is overturned at once, as it seems—the doctrine of those who advocate universal motion, that of the partisans of unity and rest, and that of the men who teach that all existing things are distributed into invariable and everlasting kinds. For all of these make use of being as an attribute. One party says that the universe is in motion, another that it is at rest.
Theaetetus
Theaet. Exactly.
5
Stranger
Str. And further, all who teach that things combine at one time and separate at another, whether infinite elements combine in unity and are derived from unity or finite elements separate and then unite, regardless of whether they say that these changes take place successively or without interruption, would be talking nonsense in all these doctrines, if there is no intermingling.
Theaetetus
Theaet. Quite right.
Stranger
Str. Then, too, the very men who forbid us to call anything by another name because it participates in the effect produced by another, would be made most especially ridiculous by this doctrine.
Theaetetus
Theaet. How so?