sophist   

Theaet. In what?
Str. We have advanced to a further point, and shown him
more than he
for bad us to investigate.
Theaet. How is that?
Str. Why, because he says-

Not-being never is, and do thou keep thy thoughts from this way
of enquiry.

Theaet. Yes, he says so.
Str. Whereas, we have not only proved that things which
are not are,
but we have shown what form of being not-being is; for we have shown
that the nature of the other is, and is distributed over all
things in
their relations to one another, and whatever part of the other is
contrasted with being, this is precisely what we have
ventured to call
not-being.
Theaet. And surely, Stranger, we were quite right.
Str. Let not any one say, then, that while affirming the
opposition of not-being to being, we still assert the being of
not-being; for as to whether there is an opposite of being, to that
enquiry we have long said good-bye-it may or may not be, and may or
may not be capable of definition. But as touching our present
account of not-being, let a man either convince us of error, or, so
long as he cannot, he too must say, as we are saying, that there is
a communion of classes, and that being, and difference or other,
traverse all things and mutually interpenetrate, so that the other
partakes of being, and by reason of this participation is, and yet
is not that of which it partakes, but other, and being other than
being, it is clearly a necessity that not-being should be. again,
being, through partaking of the other, becomes a class other than
the remaining classes, and being other than all of them, is not each
one of them, and is not all the rest, so that undoubtedly there are
thousands upon thousands of cases in which being is not, and
all other
things, whether regarded individually or collectively, in many
respects are, and in many respects are not.
Theaet. True.
Str. And he who is sceptical of this contradiction, must think how
he can find something better to say; or if. he sees a puzzle, and
his pleasure is to drag words this way and that, the argument will
prove to him, that he is not making a worthy use of his
faculties; for
there is no charm in such puzzles, and there is no difficulty in
detecting them; but we can tell him of something else the pursuit of
which is noble and also difficult.
Theaet. What is it?
Str. A thing of which I have already spoken;-letting alone these
puzzles as involving no difficulty, he should be able to follow, and
criticize in detail every argument, and when a man says that the
same is in a manner other, or that other is the same, to understand
and refute him from his own point of view, and in the same respect
in which he asserts either of these affections. But to show that
somehow and in some sense the same is other, or the other
same, or the
great small, or the like unlike; and to delight in always bringing
forward such contradictions, is no real refutation, but is
clearly the
new-born babe of some one who is only beginning to approach the
problem of being.
Theaet. To be sure.