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Section 102

PHAEDO. I think after these things were granted to him, and it was agreed that each of the Forms exists, and the other things partaking of them take their names from them, he next asked: "If you speak this way, then when you say Simmias is larger than Socrates but smaller than Phaedo, you say both things are in Simmias: Largeness and Smallness?" "I do." "But you agree that the statement 'Simmias surpasses Socrates' is not literally true exactly as spoken? For Simmias does not surpass Socrates because he is Simmias, but because of the largeness he happens to possess. Nor does he surpass Socrates because Socrates is Socrates, but because Socrates has smallness relative to Simmias's largeness." "True." "And he is surpassed by Phaedo, not because Phaedo is Phaedo, but because Phaedo possesses largeness relative to Simmias's smallness." "That is so." "Thus Simmias is called both small and large, being between the two. Yielding his smallness to the largeness of the one to be surpassed, and presenting his largeness to surpass the smallness of the other." He smiled and said, "It seems I am going to speak like a legal document, but it stands as I say." Simmias agreed. "I say this because I want you to share my opinion. It seems to me that Largeness itself never wills to be simultaneously large and small. And not only that, but the largeness within us never admits the small or wills to be surpassed. One of two things happens: either it flees and retreats when its opposite, the small, approaches, or it perishes when the small arrives. It is not willing to endure and receive smallness, and thereby become something different than what it was. I can receive and endure smallness and still remain exactly who I am, this short man here. But Largeness, being large, never dares to be small. Likewise, the small within us never wills to become or be large, nor does any other opposite, while remaining what it was, will to become and be its opposite. It either goes away or perishes in this affection."