Part 8 (2/2)
But if this is not the case, there will be need of other arguments.”
”Certainly,” said Cebes.
”You must not, then,” he continued, ”consider this only with respect to men, if you wish to ascertain it with greater certainty, but also with respect to all animals and plants, and, in a word, with respect to every thing that is subject to generation. Let us see whether they are not all so produced, no otherwise than contraries from contraries, wherever they have any such quality; as, for instance, the honorable is contrary to the base, and the just to the unjust, and so with ten thousand other things. 42. Let us consider this, then, whether it is necessary that all things which have a contrary should be produced from nothing else than their contrary. As, for instance, when any thing becomes greater, is it not necessary that, from being previously smaller, it afterward became greater?”
”Yes.”
”And if it becomes smaller, will it not, from being previously greater, afterward become smaller?”
”It is so,” he replied.
”And from stronger, weaker? and from slower, swifter?”
”Certainly.”
”What, then? If any thing becomes worse, must it not become so from better? and if more just, from more unjust?”
”How should it not?”
”We have then,” he said, ”sufficiently determined this, that all things are thus produced, contraries from contraries?”
”Certainly.”
”What next? Is there also something of this kind in them; for instance, between all two contraries a mutual twofold production, from one to the other, and from that other back again? for between a greater thing and a smaller there are increase and decrease, and do we not accordingly call the one to increase, the other to decrease?”
”Yes,” he replied.
43. ”And must not to be separated and commingled, to grow cold and to grow warm, and every thing in the same manner, even though sometimes we have not names to designate them, yet in fact be everywhere thus circ.u.mstanced, of necessity, as to be produced from each other, and be subject to a reciprocal generation?”
”Certainly,” he replied.
”What, then?” said Socrates, ”has life any contrary, as waking has its contrary, sleeping?”
”Certainly,” he answered.
”What?”
”Death,” he replied.
”Are not these, then, produced from each other, since they are contraries; and are not the modes by which they are produced two-fold intervening between these two?”
”How should it be otherwise?”
”I then,” continued Socrates, ”will describe to you one pair of the contraries which I have just now mentioned, both what it is and its mode of production: and do you describe to me the other. I say that one is to sleep, the other to awake; and from sleeping awaking is produced, and from awaking sleeping, and that the modes of their production are, the one to fall asleep, the other to be roused. 44. Have I sufficiently explained this to you or not?”
”Certainly.”
”Do you, then,” he said, ”describe to me in the same manner with respect to life and death? Do you not say that life is contrary to death?”
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