Kitap 4
22
For it is only the realm of sense around us which continues subject to destruction and generation, but this is a practically negligible part of the whole; so that it would have been fairer for them to acquit the former on the ground of the latter than to condemn the latter on account of the former.
22
Further, we shall obviously say to these thinkers too the same as we said some time agoAristot. Met. 4.5.7.; for we must prove to them and convince them that there is a kind of nature that is not moved
23
(and yet those who claim that things can at once be and not be are logically compelled to admit rather that all things are at rest than that they are in motion; for there is nothing for them to change into, since everything exists in everything). And as concerning reality, that not every appearance is real, we shall say, first, that indeed the perception, at least of the proper object of a sense, is not false, but the impression we get of it is not the same as the perception.
24
And then we may fairly express surprise if our opponents raise the question whether magnitudes and colors are really such as they appear at a distance or close at hand, as they appear to the healthy or to the diseased; and whether heavy things are as they appear to the weak or to the strong; and whether truth is as it appears to the waking or to the sleeping.
25
For clearly they do not really believe the latter alternative—at any rate no one, if in the night he thinks that he is at Athens whereas he is really in Africa, starts off to the Odeum.A concert-hall (used also for other purposes) built by Pericles. It lay to the south-east of the Acropolis. And again concerning the future (as indeed Plato saysPlat. Theaet. 171e, 178cff..) the opinion of the doctor and that of the layman are presumably not equally reliable, e.g. as to whether a man will get well or not.
