/lit/ - Literature

>>18202373
CLINIAS: Two?
ATHENIAN: Sometimes we put forward the mere name and want to know
the definition, and sometimes we put forward the definition and ask for
the name.
CLINIAS: I take it the point we want to make at the moment is this.
ATHENIAN: What?
CLINIAS: In general, things can be divided into two, and this is true of
some numbers as well. Such a number has the name ‘even’ and its definition
is ‘a number divisible into two equal parts’.
ATHENIAN: Yes, that’s the sort of thing I mean. So surely, in either case—
whether we provide the name and ask for the definition or give the definition
and ask for the name—we’re referring to the same object? When we
call it ‘even’ and define it as ‘a number divisible into two’, it’s the same
thing we’re talking about.
CLINIAS: It certainly is.
896 ATHENIAN: So what’s the definition of the thing we call the soul? Surely
we can do nothing but use our formula of a moment ago: ‘motion capable
of moving itself’.
CLINIAS: Do you mean that the entity which we all call ‘soul’ is precisely
that which is defined by the expression ‘self-generating motion’?
ATHENIAN: I do. And if this is true, are we still dissatisfied? Haven’t we
got ourselves a satisfactory proof that soul is identical with the original
source of the generation and motion of all past, present and future things
and their contraries? After all, it has been shown to be the cause of all
change and motion in everything.
CLINIAS: Dissatisfied? No! On the contrary, it has been proved up to
the hilt that soul, being the source of motion, is the most ancient thing
there is.
ATHENIAN: But when one thing is put in motion by another, it is never
thereby endowed with the power of independent self-movement. Such
derived motion will therefore come second, or as far down the list as you
fancy relegating it, being a mere change in matter that quite literally ‘has
no soul’.
CLINIAS: Correctly argued.
ATHENIAN: So it was an equally correct, final and complete statement of
the truth, when we said that soul is prior to matter, and that matter
came later and takes second place. Soul is the master, and matter its
natural subject.
CLINIAS: That is indeed absolutely true.