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Section 103

"It appears so to me entirely," said Cebes. Then someone among those present (I do not clearly remember who it was) said: "By the gods, wasn't the exact opposite of this agreed upon in our earlier arguments? That the larger comes from the smaller, and the smaller from the larger, and that this is exactly how opposites come to be—from opposites? Now it seems to be saying this could never happen." Socrates turned his head, listened, and said, "You recalled that nobly. But you did not perceive the difference between what was said then and what is said now. Then, we were saying that an opposing thing comes to be from an opposing thing. Now, we are saying that the opposite itself could never become opposite to itself—neither the one in us nor the one in nature. Then we spoke of things that possess opposites, calling them by the names of those opposites; but now we speak of the opposites themselves, whose presence gives the things their names. We say those opposites themselves would never consent to come from one another." He looked at Cebes and asked, "Did anything that man said disturb you too, Cebes?" "No," said Cebes, "not this time. Though I admit that many things do trouble me." "Then we agree unconditionally on this: an opposite will never be opposite to itself." "Completely," he said. "Examine this as well, and see if you agree. Is there something you call hot and cold?" "There is." "Are they the same as snow and fire?" "No, certainly not." "Hot is something different from fire, and cold is different from snow." "Yes." "But you think this much: snow, being snow, will never admit the hot, as we said before, and still remain what it was—both snow and hot. But as the hot approaches, it will either retreat before it or perish." "Certainly." "And fire, as the cold approaches, will either retreat or perish; it will never endure receiving the cold and still remain fire and cold." "True," he said. "So the situation with some of these things is this: not only does the Form itself merit its own name for all time, but there is also something else, which is not the Form, but which always possesses its shape whenever it exists. It will be clearer to you from this example. The Odd must always possess this name by which we call it, must it not?" "Certainly." "Is it the only existing thing, or is there something else, which is not the Odd, but which must always be called by the name of the Odd, as well as its own name, because its nature is such that it never abandons the Odd? I mean, for instance, the number three and many others. Consider the number three. Do you not think it must always be called both by its own name and by the name of the Odd, even though the Odd is not the same as three? Such is the nature of three, five, and half of all numbers, that each of them is always odd, though it is not the Odd itself. And two, four, and the other series are always even, though not the Even itself. Do you agree?" "How could I not?" he said.