Scene 2

2.1 The Courtyard in the House of Theaetetus

Theaetetus: Greetings Socrates. We have just been talking about you.

Socrates: My name it seems travels even when I stand still, is this not wondrous? Philodemos is with me, he found me at the Agora eager with news of some happy thought.

Theaetetus: Greetings, Philodemos. How is your father?

Philodemos: He is well and sings of your praises.

Theaetetus: We are in need of some song. This here is Eudoxus and Archytas. What is this news that you have? Has Parmenides come from Elea? Is he and Zeno in Athens? I have heard that they would be here for the Panathenea but I did not see them there.

Socrates: Before Philodemos answers, let me speak. I have no news but I am seeking news—my nephew, Adeimantus, I am told was seen here. We have no report of him for some days now.

Theatetus: Adeimantus was here... and like every head-strong and hot-blooded youth in the city his blood has been stirred by the latest exploit of Thrasybulus and speaking much and eagerly of his storming of the Spartans garrison at Pyle, he seeks to join his steadfast democratic camp in Piraeus with some other like-minded youths.

Socrates: That is my nephew Adeimantus. Heedless, he rushes in.admirable though his intentions are.

Philodemos: Of Parmenides and Zeno—I have no news, but I have news of greater men than either sagacious Parmenides or the bright-witted Zeno. Leucippus and Democritus. They explained to me the most amazing notion. I did not know what to make of this. They had me sat down all this afternoon. First one speaking and then the other. They spoke in tongues and it seemed as though a god had taken hold of them and lifted them to the clouds. A shadow lifted from my mind. They had me in raptures. There can be no better men. They have founded a most marvellous new world where none was before.

Theaetetus: Come, come. Are they poets that they speak in tongues? My brother is a poet and I understand him not. Music, I say is better by far. It has no tongue yet all men understand it. In this, it has many tongues.

Philodemos: Is Parmenides not a poet? And has he not taught us that the Being is changeless, still and without motion and this with many proofs?

Theaetetus: He has, though he gives it the appearance of a vision.

Philodemos: They say—Democritus and Leucippus say—whence comes change? For change is all around us. To speak of changelessness seems absurd for, as Hera­clitus has said, all things go and nothing stays and we cannot step into the same river twice. This immortal flux is a constant in all our lives and in the heavens too. Though they being closer to divinity are more stately. For do we not see the sun set and the moon hide her face? They ask, is not change fundamental in the world? They say, how does Parmenides explain this? Yet they admit the strength of his proofs and say also they have mightily struggled over this. They say, that everything is a myriad of atoms, that they rush apart in the void and join together with hooks. They are minute and not visible to the eye. Had we eyes strong enough we would see them. They are like the motes of dust dancing in a sunbeam. They make shapes, solidify into wholes and then collapse again into their parts. With this they explain the world and change. All things are not full of gods, all things are full of motion. They say it is motion that it divine. Is this not most marvellous Socrates?

Socrates: I marvel at the invention of men. And there is much to marvel over here. They have up-ended Parmenides and he will have to go looking again—that is the first marvel—and Zeno with him. None yet have found a way through his dense thicket of argument. First they make inroads, their swords sharp and then they find their swords blunted and everywhere thorns that do scratch at them unawares. Yet, let me ask a few questions—such a marvel must teased to speak more.

Philodemos: They are well rounded like the sphere. Each one identical to the other.

Socrates: And yet they have hooks?

Philodemos: You must speak to Democritus—I do not now recall how he explained this.

Socrates: And these atoms, do they themselves fall apart? Are they themselves made of atoms?

Philodemos: They are eternal and permanent. There is nothing more real. They were there at the beginning of time and will be there at its end. They are everlasting. They are at the root of all things. Say you take a length of wood—a rod say, and then break it in half—is not each part a piece of wood?

Socrates: Of course.

Philodemos: And each part alike?

Socrates: Yes again.

Philodemos: And if you take a half again, and break that again is that not again a piece of wood—and every part alike as each other?

Socrates: I can see where you are driving me to with this. Yet say, I took a cup and broke that in half. Is not each half different?

Philodemos: Yes. I cannot disagree with that. You must keep dividing and not stop. If you keep dividing the cup what makes it a cup disappears and you have small pieces which look alike. And then the argument proceeds as before. But surely—they say—we cannot keep dividing until they vanish. For whence has being vanished to when we began with being? What remains when we cannot divide any further is the atom or rather atoms.

Socrates: How wonderful. Are they all alike?

Philodemos: On this they differ. Leucippus says not and Democritus says they do. They say that an atom is an element of being that cannot be further reduced. They are at the root of being, supporting it.

Socrates: I take my cup and place it on a table. The table supports the cup. After all, where would the cup be if there was no place for it. What would support it? Would you say that both the cup and the table have being?

Philodemos: I do not see how it can be otherwise.

Socrates: Then the void of Leucippus and Democritus—the void through which the atoms leap—does this have being?

Philodemos: I think it must not, for there is nothing there. Yet were it truly not to have nothing there then how could we put something there. It is like a empty jug, which even when empty contains a space, a place for water; and so, perhaps, yes. But it is a strange kind of being, a very thin kind of being, not like the being of wood or stone which you can knock up against. It is more kin to water—the water of the sea through which a ship knives through or the water in a jug in which a finger can be placed in. Ah, yes, I have it now! If one can bang a nail into wood and also pour water into a jug then they are alike in this; and if the first two has being then surely the latter two has being also.

Socrates: Then are we not back again where Parmenides left us? Being in being is just again being.

Philodemos: You have me. But I do not think you would stop Democritus and Leucippus so easily.

Socrates: Let me summarise: they seem to have broken apart Parmenides whole and well-rounded being into many parts and each one a tiny reflection of that first being. They have multiplied his being into beings and then joined them up again.

Philodemos: I had not seen it this way. Yet, it seems that you are right. Socrates, you have a most marvellous facility for seeing things afresh.

Socrates: So they say each atom is a one, distinct in itself, eternal and well- rounded. And all identical.

Philodemos: In short, yes.

Socrates: Well, say that I throw two of these atoms together do they collide or do they constantly approach each other without ever colliding?

Philodemos: What strange questions you are asking Socrates. They must collide, I cannot see otherwise.

Socrates: And if they touch are they, the two atoms, not become as one? For if they do not touch we can slip a leaf between them. Yet if they do touch and we cannot slip a leaf between them how can we say that they are distinct?

Philodemos: You have me again.

Socrates: It seems to me that atoms, though a delightful invention—and also profound—and we will not be able to sound out their profundity today, do not get at the root of being. Perhaps we must ask what it means to get at the root.

Philodemos: Have they not explained many things by one simple conception? Is that not getting at the root?

Socrates: Look at the root of a tree, for although we speak of it as one, the roots of a tree are many and spread out in the earth. We must delve deep to find roots. Now, I have heard it said that all the ancient thinkers agreed that contraries were at the root of being. So if we admit parts we must admit wholes. Are not your atoms conceived in such a way as to make wholes? Is then the whole not prior to the part? Yet, the way you have explained it demonstrates the parts come first.

Philodemos: I understand what you are saying Socrates yet it seems to me that the part must come first. If I make a table I must have the parts at hand and a hammer to make my table.

Socrates: And I too understand what you are saying and if I were to make a table I would be sure to have some carpenter deliver me the wood and the hammer before I began on my table. It would not do to go about the courtyard looking as though I was hammering together a table and yet there was neither wood there or a hammer in my hand. People would say that Socrates has gone mad at last. I think some say this already. Yet, my dear friend Philodemos must I not have an idea in mind of the table I am going to make before going to make it?

Philodemos: Yes, but you are a man and not wide-earthed nature. As a man you must have an idea in mind. What would a man be without an idea? He would not be a man. A man works with purpose even when he is at leisure for then leisure is his purpose. And where are these ideas in nature? We do not stumble over them in either the day or the night. This is too dark for me! What happens if we set two ideas colliding together? You see, Socrates, I too can ask questions!

Socrates: Well done, Philodemos.

Theaetetus: If you are stopped Socrates then perhaps I can now speak. Though Heraclitus is right to point to the eternal flux in nature there is eternal constancy in nature too. Take a dog—first it is a pup—and then he grows and couples with another—and another litter of pups is born whilst he grows old and dies. And though his offspring is not like himself in all ways we can say there is a constancy in the nature of a dog and its form. Constancy and inconstancy, change and changeless- ness—they go together, neither one imposing its will wholly on the other and are forever inseparable twins. They are two and one.

Philodemos: So you think species cannot change?

Theaetetus: I have not witnessed such change. Though I admit that there is a strange pattern that holds all together. I mean, when I see that a man has a head and four limbs, and a bear has a head and four limbs and even birds too—though they use them differently and they are shaped differently. Some pattern appears to have imposed its will on the world or some will has imposed a pattern. Whence comes this pattern and this will?

Eudoxus: A god. Some god, high on Mount Olympus surveying all takes the clay and shapes it to his clear eyed pattern—a pattern clear to him but full of the profoundest mysteries to us who, seeking a vision of the most highest, and of the god himself, and of the mind of this god—see only cliffs and chasms obscured in much mist.

Archytas: Zeus himself!

Eudoxus: Nay not Zeus—not the Zeus of our myths and nor of Homer. He makes mock of the gods.

Archytas: Hesiod, that rustic and unschooled poet from Helicon would have us believe otherwise. For him Chaos was the first begotten and then Eros and he, stirring to life, stirred all else to life—like yeast fermenting.

Eudoxus: I know him well—he was a favourite of my youth—when I fancied myself a poet. But now I know better: Shepherds of the city, wretched things of shame, mere bellies, they know how to speak many false things as though they were true; but knowing, when they will, to utter true things. Lies—all lies! A dunghill full of lies.

Archytas: What is fundamental is truth, the search for truth, how to recognise the truth and how to stay truthful.

Eudoxus: That is Parmenides way of truth or rather the way of the goddess that taught him in the abode of the night having borne him aloft in a fiery chariot.

Philodemos: If only the daughters of the sun attended me whilst I search for truth! Instead, it is men mostly as dull as I.

Eudoxus: Nay Philodemos—do not lower yourself. Thy heart is set upon a noble path. Cleverer men, silver tongued, lacking wisdom in all things, are often more base. We see them all rise now in Athens when Athens has never been as low as she is today. They are darkening all our skies and it seems—the very air itself. Can such a species of men change, and more—can we wait for them to change?

Socrates: Things change. And perhaps species change. Have we not heard, if not seen, stories of a two headed dog born of a one headed dog?

Theaetetus: It is true that we have heard this; but men are fond of stories and of relating stories—it passes the time when time must be passed—around a fire or when breaking bread; but say this story is true? What then? I see nothing in it but the birth of monstrosities—nature sometimes does us ill.

Socrates: Why Theaetetus, do you not see if a species can change—and I do not say it can—but say that it can—it can change in either of two ways: of itself, or at birth; but can a species change of itself? I have seen a pup grow into a dog; and this is change, but this is change natural to the species and we recognise this by calling it growth—a pup does not grow a new head! And though I have seen a three legged dog beloved to Heraclius limping by a campsite in Potidaea, this dog did not begin with three legs, he was no three-legged pup; he lost it in some fight with a wolf—or so Heraclius would have us believe—he says he awoken at night by the sounds of a kind of wolfish snarling. This is change, but an un-natural change, I mean not a change by growth; it is an accident of a kind, an accidental change by some untoward happening in the world. For things happen in the world. Both good and ill. So a pup grows into a dog and it may lose a leg in a fight; the shape of the dog changes. But can we say the dog? No, rather this particular dog; and not the dog itself—the species dog—the archetype and form of a dog of which this particular dog is a representative. So though we have change here, Philodemos, can we say we have species change?

Philodemos: As you have put it—no, we cannot.

Socrates: Yet we have our two headed dog! Two heads are not better than one when they have one body between them. Which way do they go? Between them they cannot decide. A two headed dog is a poor kind of dog leading a miserable existence. Other dogs will spurn it—and it’s mother too. And it has never known its father. It has not much of a chance of survival. And we have seen, like likes like; it’s the rare kind of man that likes the unlike—I mean genuinely—for the many will treat it as a mere novelty to gawp at.

Theaetetus: Were a two headed dog to mate would it breed true and give birth to another two headed dog or would it multiply it’s monstrosities and give birth to a third or even a fourth head?

Socrates: How many heads can a dog have? A ten-headed dog is an impossibility. Where would all the heads go? A two headed dog is rare, and a four headed dog must be more rarer still—we have heard no reports of such; and this might be admitted as an element of truth in this story; for if a man made up a story of such a thing, why not then three or four? There is a kind of delight in multiplication. And if it were to mate, where would it find another like itself? The two headed dog is rare; so were it to mate with another dog, a ordinary dog, one with the one head and no other extra head; then two archetypes and two forms must struggle it out—it may breed one head or two heads; let’s say, it breeds two; let’s say here, in this instance, that two heads are better than one! Let us say that the two headed archetype is dominant; well then, Theaetetus, we have species change; for to have species change, not only must it be able to breed, and actually breed, it must breed true; and given these two conditions species have the potential to change, even though, on the whole, there is actually no change; such change must be rare, or we would see evidence of it everyday; or at any rate, every year. The two headed dog—your monstrosity—is evidence of the potential of species change.

Theaetetus: Do not call it mine—I keep no monstrosities—and nor do I keep dogs with their monstrous barking; you do me ill by calling it mine.

Socrates: Why then, man, I shall keep it! And I shall be the talk of Athens—there he goes, they will murmur, Socrates and his two-headed dog. Aristophanes, I am sure, will write a new play.

Philodemos: From frogs to dogs seems like an advance of a kind: Socrates doth not croak, now he doth bark and bite!

Eudoxus: But can what comes to be and then passes away be fundamental? Living creatures are most of this mold, subject to generation and decay and finally corrup­tion—can they truly be said to be fundamental? And now you say—Socrates—that the pattern of life itself is subject to the same, I mean also to generation, decay and corruption. As we think and talk—or rather, you talk and think—it seems everything permanent and secure dissolves.

Socrates: Nature loves to hide, not from deceit, but because hers is a high and lofty nature. If we are to uncover her secrets we must approach her in various ways. What is fundamental may not lie at the root but all around us. Both beginnings and endings are important—and we must, I think, investigate the aim of a beginning as well as the beginning itself. If we are to unearth being, we must dig well—and to dig well, we must aim well and sharpen our wits.

Theaetetus: Friends, let us now enter the cool shade of my rooms. The sun is as hot as ever overhead and poor Eudoxus and Archytas—guests of mine—as you all are now—are both tired and sweaty to judge by their faces. Let me call for refreshments.

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