THEAETETUS: Yes, we know it.

STRANGER: When the affirmation or denial takes Place in silence and in

the mind only, have you any other name by which to call it but opinion?

THEAETETUS: There can be no other name.

STRANGER: And when opinion is presented, not simply, but in some form of

sense, would you not call it imagination?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And seeing that language is true and false, and that thought

is the conversation of the soul with herself, and opinion is the end of

thinking, and imagination or phantasy is the union of sense and opinion,

the inference is that some of them, since they are akin to language,

should have an element of falsehood as well as of truth?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: Do you perceive, then, that false opinion and speech have

been discovered sooner than we expected?--For just now we seemed to be

undertaking a task which would never be accomplished.

THEAETETUS: I perceive.

127

Sophist