92 PLATO
“And wasn’t it because it was about a particular sort of thing that it too came to be
of a particular sort, and the same way for the other arts and kinds of knowledge?”
“That’s the way it is.”
“Well then,” I said, “if you’ve understood it now, call that what I meant to say then,
that with all the things that are such as to be about something, the ones that are only them-
selves are about things that are only themselves, while the ones that are of particular kinds
are about things of particular kinds. And I’m not saying at all that the sorts of things they’re
about are the same sorts they themselves are, as a result of which the knowledge of what’s
healthy and sick would be healthy and sickly, and the knowledge of bad and good things
would be bad and good; instead, I’m saying that when a knowledge came into being that
was not just about the very thing knowledge is about, but about a particular thing, and that
was what’s healthy and sick, it too as a result came to be of a particular sort. And this made
it no longer be called simply knowledge, but, with the particular sort included, medicine.”
“I’ve understood it,” he said, “and it does seem that way to me.”
“So wouldn’t you place thirst,” I said, “among those things in which to be for
something is exactly what they are? Thirst is, of course, for something.”
“I would, yes,” he said; “it’s for drink anyway.”
“And isn’t a particular sort of thirst for a particular sort of drink, while thirst itself
is not for a lot or a little, or for a good or a bad one, or, in a word, for any particular sort,
but thirst itself is naturally just for drink itself?”
“Absolutely so.”
“Therefore the soul of someone who’s thirsty, to the extent he’s thirsty, wants
nothing other than to drink, and stretches out to this, and sets itself in motion toward it.”
“Clearly so.”
“So if anything ever pulls it back when it’s thirsty, it would be some different thing
in it from the very thing that’s thirsty, and that tows it like an animal toward drinking?
Because we claim that the same thing couldn’t be doing opposite things in the same part
of itself in relation to the same thing at the same time.”
“No, it couldn’t.”
“In the same way, I imagine, one doesn’t do well to say about an archer that his
hands push and pull the bow at the same time, but rather that one hand is the one pushing
it and the other the one pulling it.”
“Absolutely so,” he said.
“Now do we claim that there are some people who sometimes, while they’re
thirsty, aren’t willing to drink?”
“Very much so,” he said, “many people and often.”
“Well what should one say about them?” I said. “Isn’t there something in their
soul telling them to drink and something preventing them from it that’s different from
and mastering what’s telling them to?”
“It seems that way to me,” he said.
“And doesn’t the thing that prevents such things come about in it, when it does
come about, from reasoning? But the things that tug and pull come to it from passions
and disorders?”
“It looks that way.”
“So not unreasonably will we regard them as being two things and different from
each other, referring to that in the soul by which it reasons as its reasoning part, and that
by which it feels erotic love, hunger, and thirst, and is stirred with the other desires, as
its irrational and desiring part, associated with certain satisfactions and pleasures.”
“No, we’d regard them that way quite reasonably,” he said.e439a
bcd