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SOC. Why, you are beautiful, Theaetetus, and not, as Theodorus said, ugly; for he who speaks beautifully is beautiful and good. But besides being beautiful, you have done me a favor by relieving me from a long discussion, if you think that the soul views some things by itself directly and others through the bodily faculties; for that was my own opinion, and I wanted you to agree.
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THEAET. Well, I do think so.
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SOC. To which class, then, do you assign being; for this, more than anything else, belongs to all things?
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THEAET. I assign them to the class of notions which the soul grasps by itself directly.
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SOC. And also likeness and unlikeness and identity and difference?
186
THEAET. Yes.
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SOC. And how about beautiful and ugly, and good and bad?
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THEAET. I think that these also are among the things the essence of which the soul most certainly views in their relations to one another, reflecting within itself upon the past and present in relation to the future.
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SOC. Stop there. Does it not perceive the hardness of the hard through touch, and likewise the softness of the soft?
186
THEAET. Yes.
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SOC. But their essential nature and the fact that they exist, and their opposition to one another, and, in turn, the essential nature of this opposition, the soul itself tries to determine for us by reverting to them and comparing them with one another.
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THEAET. Certainly.
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SOC. Is it not true, then, that all sensations which reach the soul through the body, can be perceived by human beings, and also by animals, from the moment of birth; whereas reflections about these, with reference to their being and usefulness, are acquired, if at all, with difficulty and slowly, through many troubles, in other words, through education?
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THEAET. Assuredly.
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SOC. Is it, then, possible for one to attain truth who cannot even get as far as being?
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THEAET. No.
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SOC. And will a man ever have knowledge of anything the truth of which he fails to attain?
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THEAET. How can he, Socrates?