THEAETETUS: Very good.

STRANGER: Let us enquire, then, how we come to predicate many names of

the same thing.

THEAETETUS: Give an example.

STRANGER: I mean that we speak of man, for example, under many

names--that we attribute to him colours and forms and magnitudes and

virtues and vices, in all of which instances and in ten thousand

others we not only speak of him as a man, but also as good, and having

numberless other attributes, and in the same way anything else which we

originally supposed to be one is described by us as many, and under many

names.

THEAETETUS: That is true.

STRANGER: And thus we provide a rich feast for tyros, whether young or

old; for there is nothing easier than to argue that the one cannot be

many, or the many one; and great is their delight in denying that a man

is good; for man, they insist, is man and good is good. I dare say that

you have met with persons who take an interest in such matters--they are

often elderly men, whose meagre sense is thrown into amazement by these

discoveries of theirs, which they believe to be the height of wisdom.

Sophist