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Section 100

"But what I am saying is nothing new," he said. "It is what I have never stopped saying, both in past times and in our recent argument. I am going to try to show you the form of cause I have busied myself with, and I return to those much-discussed things, beginning from them. I hypothesize that there is a Beautiful itself by itself, and a Good, and a Great, and all the rest. If you grant me these and agree they exist, I hope to display the cause from them, and discover that the soul is immortal." "Grant that I give them to you," said Cebes, "and hurry to the conclusion." "Consider the next step," he said, "and see if you agree. It appears to me that if anything else is beautiful besides the Beautiful itself, it is beautiful for no other reason than because it partakes of that Beautiful. And I say the same for everything. Do you agree with this kind of cause?" "I agree," he said. "Then I no longer understand those other sophisticated causes. If someone tells me why a thing is beautiful, saying it has a vibrant color, or a specific shape, or something like that, I bid farewell to all of them—for they all confuse me. I hold simply, plainly, and perhaps foolishly to this: nothing else makes it beautiful except the presence of, or communion with, or somehow the sharing in, that Beautiful itself. I do not insist on how it happens, but only that all beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful. This seems to me the safest answer to give myself and others. Clinging to this, I think I shall never fall: it is safe to answer that beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful. Doesn't it seem so to you?" "It does." "And large things are large by Largeness, and larger things are larger by Largeness, and smaller things are smaller by Smallness?" "Yes." "So you would not accept it if someone said that one man is larger than another by a head, and the smaller is smaller by the very same thing (a head). You would insist you simply mean that everything larger than another is larger by nothing else than Largeness, and the smaller is smaller by nothing else than Smallness. I think you would be afraid of encountering a contrary argument if you said someone is larger by a head: first, that the larger is larger and the smaller is smaller by the exact same thing (a head); and second, that the larger man is larger by a head, which is a small thing—and it is surely monstrous that someone should be large by something small. Would you not fear this?" Cebes laughed and said, "I certainly would."