90 PLATO
“Say it,” he said.
“Does the same thing have the power to stand still and move,” I said, “at the same
time in the same respect?”
“Not at all.”
“Then let’s agree about it in a still more precise way, so that we won’t be quibbling
as we go on. Because if anyone were to say of a person who was standing still but moving
his hands and his head, that the same person was standing still and moving at the same
time, I imagine we wouldn’t consider that he ought to say it that way, but that some one
thing about the person stands still while another moves. Isn’t that so?”
“It’s so.”
“So if the one who said that were to get still more cute, making the subtle point
that tops stand still as a whole and move at the same time, when they spin around with
the point fixed in the same place, or that anything else going around in a circle on the
same spot does that, we wouldn’t accept it, since it’s not with respect to the same things
about themselves that such things are in that case staying in place and being carried
around, but we’d claim that they have in them something straight and something sur-
rounding it, and stand still with respect to the straight part, since they don’t tilt in any
direction, but move in a circle with respect to the surrounding part; and when the
straight axis is leaning to the right or the left, or forward or back, at the same time it’s
spinning around, then it’s not standing still in any way.”
“You’ve got that right,” he said.
“Therefore, when such things are said they won’t knock us off course at all, any
more than they’ll persuade us that in any way, the same thing, at the same time, in the
same respect, in relation to the same thing, could ever undergo, be, or do opposite things.”
“Not me at any rate,” he said.
“Be that as it may,” I said, “in order that we won’t be forced to waste time going
through all the objections of that sort and establishing that they aren’t true, let’s go for-
ward on the assumption that this is how it is, having agreed that, if these things should
ever appear otherwise than that, all our conclusions from it will have been refuted.”
“That’s what one ought to do,” he said.
“Well then, would you place nodding ‘yes’ as compared to shaking one’s head
‘no’ among things that are opposite to each other, and having a craving to get something
as compared to rejecting it, and drawing something to oneself as compared to pushing it
away, and everything of that sort? Whether they’re things one does actively or experi-
ences passively, there won’t be any difference on that account.”
“Sure,” he said, “they’re opposites.”
“And what about thirst and hunger and the desires in general,” I said, “as well as
wishing and wanting? Wouldn’t you place all these things somewhere in those forms
just mentioned? For example, wouldn’t you claim that the soul of someone who desires
either has a craving for what it desires, or draws to itself what it wants to become its
own, or, in turn, to the extent it wishes something to be provided to it, nods its assent to
this to itself as though it had asked some question, stretching out toward its source?”
“I would indeed.”
“And what about this? Won’t we place not wanting and not wishing and not desir-
ing in with pushing away and banishing from itself and in with all the opposites of the
former things?”
“How could we not?”
“Now these things being so, are we going to claim that there’s a form consisting
of desires, and that among these themselves, the most conspicuous ones are what we
call thirst and what we call hunger?”de437a
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