Ath. so, lest it make you faint and dizzy as it rushes past and poses you with questions you are unused to answering, Footnote 1Cp. Plat. Laws 886b. and thus causes an unpleasing lack of shapeliness and seemliness, I think that I ought now to act in the way described—question myself first, while you remain listening in safety, and then return answer to myself, and in this way proceed through the whole argument until it has discussed in full the subject of soul, and demonstrated that soul is prior to body. Footnote 2Cp. Plat. Laws 896b, Plat. Laws 896c.
Clin. Your suggestion, Stranger, we think excellent; so do as you suggest.
Ath. Come then,—if ever we ought to invoke God’s aid, now is the time it ought to be done. Let the gods be invoked with all zeal to aid in the demonstration of their own existence. And let us hold fast, so to speak, to a safe cable as we embark on the present discussion. And it is safest, as it seems to me, to adopt the following method of reply when questions such as this are put on these subjects; for instance, when a man asks me—Do all things stand still, Stranger, and nothing move? Or is the exact opposite the truth? Or do some things move
and some remain at rest?
My answer will be, Some things move, others remain at rest.
Footnote 3Cp.Plat. Soph. 255 ff.; Timaeus 57 ff. Then do not the standing things stand, and the moving things move, in a certain place?
Of course.
And some will do this in one location, and others in several.
You mean,
we will say, that those which have the quality of being at rest at the center move in one location, as when the circumference of circles that are said to stand still revolves?
Yes. And we perceive that motion of this kind, which simultaneously turns in this revolution both the largest circle and the smallest, distributes itself
to small and great proportionally, altering in proportion its own quantity; whereby it functions as the source of all such marvels as result from its supplying great and small circles simultaneously with harmonizing rates of slow and fast speeds—a condition of things that one might suppose to be impossible.
Quite true.
And by things moving in several places you seem to me to mean all things that move by locomotion, continually passing from one spot to another, and sometimes resting
on one axis Footnote 4i.e. with a forward gliding motion, as opposed to rolling forward (like a car wheel). and sometimes, by revolving, on several axes. And whenever one such object meets another, if the other is at rest, the moving object is split up; but if they collide with others moving to meet them from an opposite direction, they form a combination which is midway between the two.
Yes, I affirm that these things are so, just as you describe.