Scene 3

3.1 In the Living Quarters of the House of Theaetetus

Theaetetus: Socrates, what is fundamental is wine when one is thirsty! What do you say to that?

Socrates: I say—more wine—so I can drink to your health and to your thirst!

Theaetatus: Now that we are rested—let us begin again.

Philodemos: You are speaking of the laws of nature?

Theaetetus: In a manner of speaking—yes. If I pick up this stone and drop it do you not see that it moves in a straight line directly towards the earth?

Philodemos: It is not just this stone but every stone. And you are right, it is a straight line—but what of it?

Theaetetus: Could it be otherwise?

Philodemos: I think not—and before you ask, why not—see Theaetetus, I am ahead of you—let me ask the same myself.

Theaetetus: You well know me! Now, if I pick up this stone and drop it again, will it fall to the earth in the same time, or less, or more?

Philodemos: I think it should be the same. It could be less by an amount that we cannot see, given how fast it moves, and by the same, a little bit more. Yet, I think the simplest choice here is to say the same and we should choose the simplest if not forced otherwise by circumstance.

Theaetetus: And does not this law hold throughout the land? It is this that I call a law of nature. Nature is well-ordered and she keeps herself in order by laws. But mark you this, that I say laws in the plural, but the best law, the most perfect law must be one. For if we had many laws, there must be laws that keeps these in order and yet higher. And more—if there was a law that varied, taking one form here in Athens and another in Sparta we can expect that there is a law to explain this variation. The real, true law must be one, whole, unvarying—and well-rounded, being alike everywhere—and treating everything alike.

Philodemos: Speak not of Sparta and nor of the laws of Sparta! Sparta that has taken hold of Athens and turned her citizens into slaves and her laws into a noose that tightens around Athenian necks. Art thou now a follower of that Spar­tan despot—Lysander? I would not have believed it of a man like you, Theaetetus. Everyone speaks well of you. Yet you join Athens to Sparta when we must unjoin what has been most forcibly yoked together in our hour of utmost weakness. Athens turns Spartan—who would have believed it. Yet we must now all believe it.

Archytas: Hold Philodemos—he speaks of Sparta only in a manner of speak- ing—as men of ideas oft do. Take it not so ill. So Theaetetus, you too are a follower of Parmenides? I had taken you to be a follower of the Pythagorean lyre.

Theaetetus: That I am—the music of the spheres is all around us. I am haunted by it.

Socrates: You turn yourself into a poet. Do not your laws of nature take a math­ematical shape? The stone falls in a straight line, and how long it takes to fall is a number—whatever that number may be. It seems here number and geometry has made itself incarnate in body.

Theaetetus: I marvel at this every day—but do not call me a poet for I do not understand poets.

Socrates: Then does not line and number precede your laws of nature? Are they not an idea before they are anything else? Where are your ideas? In your mind certainly, and where are the ideas of nature? In nature herself.

Theaetetus: This is a hard and difficult problem. For being cannot be two. For then we have a real void and not the false void of Democritus. How would influence travel through a void? To be where nothing is? There must be a medium that allows it passage. It cannot be. Men have minds and men are a part of nature though they often set themselves against her, withdrawing from nature into the cities. Yet I cannot see how a mind can be a body. It is found in bodies. And where there is a body there is a mind. You will find my mind—so to speak—in me.

Socrates: An explanation to justify the name of a true and fundamental explanation must account for all and hence must account for both. To explain one is to only explain half the story. Though nature is far broader and wider than men. Are we to reduce mind to body or body to mind? If we cannot do the first then we must try the other. Yet if body is reduced to mind—is all of nature the nature of the mind?

Theaetetus: Socrates, you bewilder me. It seems hard to see what this means. We seem first driven towards one and then to the other. I cannot see how wood—say—can be mind or have mind. Listen, Socrates—listen closely—does it speak?

Socrates: All things are full of gods—listen closely enough and you will hear a god speak. Nature herself is like a well-ordered city. All her parts are kept in order by some supreme law which enacts justice in all parts. Here freeing up, and there reprimanding.

Theaetetus: Now you have leapt ahead and my logic is limping far behind. I do not follow where you are leading with your winged words.

Socrates: You do not like poets yet you sometimes speak like a poet. We have agreed that your laws of nature are the form of geometry and number—perhaps both—for is not a unit of length a number? As is a unit of volume? And if both, then a unity. I say, Geometry and Number embrace each other and melt into a unity whose faces now show one and then the other like the Janus headed god, whose aspect surveys both past and future. Nature, in one of her aspects both geometrises and individualises, making multiplicity out of unity.

Theaetetus: Nature is a geometer and she loves to geometrise

Polydemos: You say that because you are a geometer and you see everything geometrically. I do not see geometry speaking but a geometer.

Socrates: Now a true law of nature must take account of all things. And freedom is fundamental. Do I not now choose to speak, and then to stop? Can I not lift up my hand, and then move it first to the right and then to the left? This is freedom, though it is bound by circumstance and custom.

Theaetetus: Yet a stone falls towards the earth. I do not see stones falling towards the sky.

Socrates: Everything has it’s own nature. Does not smoke reach upward to the sky? There may yet be stones that fall towards the sky. The moon, it seems to me, is very much like a stone. As is the sun. A fiery stone, it first rises in the sky and then falls and does it hit the broad breasted earth?

Theaetetus: This would be very strange—can there be a graveyard of dead suns? And would a new sun be born each day? The Aegyptians say that Ra, the sun god, dives deep into the underworld on his golden boat to arise on the other side—and so say I. And Anaxagoras taking a leap says that the earth itself is well-rounded like a sphere, like the moon and the sun. Though, I say, if the sun and the moon move then why does the earth not? Are we are as men standing on a moving ship who do not feel the movement though the ship itself moves upon the sea?

Socrates: These are excellent questions, but I wish to take a step back. Necessity and freedom. These shape our world and our own selves. Even the gods do not fight against necessity. Ananke who holds the spindle of time, and is mother of the fates, binds them. And laws dispense justice by necessity in nature and by freedom in man, yet he being a part of nature, he is also bound by necessity.

Theaetetus: So you take justice to have first spun the well rounded sphere?

Socrates: She is here with us. In the clouds, the leaves, the stones and within men. She is within the wine-drenched sea.

Theaetetus: Now you speak as a poet. And as I have already said I do not under­stand poets.

Socrates: I am far from a poet. Yet a wind of inspiration sometimes catches my tongue. Poets are in love with inspiration, they worship the muse. I only ask she speaks to me without flattery.

Theaetetus: Nature needs to be flattered to give up her secrets. In this she is very much like a woman. What is fundamental is woman. Man is born of woman and takes a woman for a wife or a mistress. Where would man be without woman? Where would woman be without man? The gods created not just things in the world to stand by themselves, here, now and in all eternity; but yokes to tie things and bind things together. Nothing separate—but all a part of the main.

Socrates: Even the gods admit this. What is fundamental is the ground upon which we can build. A ground well-secured for we do not want our house to sink. And well- cleared, for the ground is to support a house and not a forest. A forest can grow on rough ground. The ground is beneath us, so we can stand upon it, so we can build upon it. Yet, there must be a space for the house to be built up. So the fundamental is not just the ground, the bare earth upon which we build, but the place that the house itself will occupy.

Theaetetus: There is more to this fundamental than first meets the eye. This is always your way Socrates. It is fundamental to you! I will add, that a house of two stories has more than one ground. It has two.

Socrates: This is true, and wonderfully said, you fine upstanding man! But hold, there is more to my own self than questions growing upon questions like figs upon a tree. What is fundamental to a man—first and foremost is being a man. I must first drink, eat, sleep and also bathe. Questions come after when first needs are met. Yet, were we to have the ground and the place we must admit that a house does not build itself.

Eudoxus: But a tree grows from a seed, it is it’s own maker. Are you saying—like some have said—that the world began? And when it began—from itself—from a seed?

Socrates: These are difficult questions you are asking me Eudoxus—have you no easier ones? Like how I did break my fast this morning and began my day?

Eudoxus: Easier questions I ask of easier men and you are no easy man—Socrates; this is why some rate you, and other hate; and I—as you know well—am in the first camp; and does it not give you pleasure to converse upon such questions? Aye, I see it does, from your smile; and you are smiling more broadly now; you jest, only to pause to think! Socrates—you are wholly a thinking man; admirable from afar—but rather frightening close up; some of us have had it whispered amongst us—that the goddess Athena converses with you with dreams. Others say that your questions will make you immortal.

Socrates: I am like everyman—I must eat, sleep, drink and dream; and like every­man, there is a woman in my bed and squealing children in my yard, who must be fed—and when grown, wed; and though my wife doth embrace me and my dreams, I say to her, embrace carefully, for you embrace my dreams; and my children, care not what dreams I have; what dreams do come, I do let come, I cannot do otherwise; but I am no dream interpreter, no seer of dreams—I make no prophecies. Do not set me upon a pedestal, Philodemos. Socrates does not stand upon upon a pedestal. I am not an uncommon man—but common—with the common lot of men. I am not high-born. Socrates is merely mortal with all the weaknesses of mortal men.

Eudoxus: It is out of the common, the uncommon is born; men that are uncommon were common once, or more often, their fathers or grandfathers were—and many, were it not for their fathers or grandfathers, would be as likely to return there; you may not be high-born like a high official of state, or a man born to a kingship; but your soul is as silver or as gold and more like gold than silver; thy words oft do disclose their gleam; I dare say—that your name will be more known than many a man whose brilliance doth dazzle the crowd. This is why they laugh at you, for you have out-dazzled them and they no longer care to understand; such effort is beyond them. Be careful, Socrates, for what is beyond the manys understanding oft turns to laughter, and then to hate.

Socrates: You number me amongst the best of men and what can a poor man like I do but accept such words when they are so nobly meant.

Eudoxus: But surely you see that you not like others? Such modesty hangs not upon thee well, Socrates. It is a form of dishonesty. And dishonesty does not become you: Socrates—if you honour the truth and hold truth sacred—and I know thee well enough to know that you do—you must not be dishonest about yourself.

Socrates: I do see—but do not tempt me—it is better not to dwell upon such things; all men with some talent—and I daresay that I have some talent—are susceptible to flattery—and in this I am like all other men—better then to dwell upon the world, or upon others, than upon myself; in this, I know myself well; like I know others well—I have seen others going astray—led more by the crowd than by themselves; it is by knowing others that I know myself. Men, despite their differences have much in common. Many men start off well, saying good and fine things—fewer live up to them; and all too often, they end up badly, calling themselves gods; setting themselves up as gods or as half-gods; lording themselves over others; from man to super man and then over man and which mostly means, over men; petty tyrants, though their tyranny may not be petty at all. First Thirty, then Three Hundred and from Three Hundred to Three Thousand—and then a city dies to all things noble. Socrates is not a god, Socrates is mortal; he is not immortal, he is a man and he plans to remain a mortal man though he recognises divinity in all things and most of all, in the divine itself.

Eudoxus: I will not retract my words—they were well meant; you do me ill by calling them flattery.

Socrates: I do not think of you as a flatterer; I recognise the sentiment behind your words—and it does thee honour.

Eudoxus: That is well said and I am soothed. How then did you break your fast this morning?

Socrates: With dark green olives, with bread and with water. I broke it at the house of Philotectes, the geometer. He had some questions of me which I was quite unable to answer—to his great and merry satisfaction.

Theaetetus: Did he ask you whether the world began or has it always been and always will be? Or that it began and will end?

Socrates: We did but touch upon it. Consider this Theaetetus: either the world began or it did not; if it began, it began in some finite time in the past—and at which time, time too, began; if it did not, then it must have existed for an infinite amount of time; so to investigate this question we must investigate the meaning of the word infinite. What do you think about infinity?

Theaetetus: It is a fine and noble word like immortal or eternal; and it is a fine and noble word to give to this world which is a home for all men to live in. What can we say about infinity—except that it is not finite; the finite we can distinguish—one from another—as we distinguish one from three, or fifty from a thousand.

Socrates: Agreed, the infinite is not finite and therein resides a clue to its nature; we distinguish the finite from the infinite as the former is graspable, and the latter is not; no matter how large your grasp, the infinite is always larger—it always exceeds your grasp.

Theaetetus: I do not think Philotectes would agree with you.

Socrates: Philotectes and I do not agree on many things—we argue all through the night. He is tireless.

Philodemos: Wait here, Socrates. I will be back in a moment „.I have in my hand a twig from the olive tree just outside this house. Can you hold it Socrates in your palm?

Socrates: I am holding it.

Philodemos: And it fits fully and wholly within your hand with no part extruding from your hand.

Socrates: Yes.

Philodemos: Why then, Socrates—you are holding infinity in the palm of your hand! How then can you say infinity cannot be graspable?

Socrates: You may call it infinity—but to my eye it rather looks like a twig.

Philodemos: Your eyes do not deceive you—it is a twig; nevertheless, it is also infinity—it may not have an infinite number of atoms in it—for earlier you stalled that argument, turning it upon its head—but most assuredly it has an infinite number of points in it.

Socrates: But points are positions and positions are not real they merely indicate location. How can I grasp what is not real?

Philodemos: This is an argument worthy of a sophist. I did not think you had it within you given the way you have inveighed against sophists for leading men astray with persuasive words but specious argument. I merely have to say, that this twig is a physical representative of a geometric entity—a straight line—and you hold in your hand an infinite number of locations on that twig considered as a straight line.

Socrates: Well, say I agree, for you are beginning to persuade me and I hold infinity, in some sense, in my hand; but is it the true infinity?

Philodemos: Whatever can you mean, Socrates? Infinity is neither true nor false—it is, or it is not.

Socrates: Were I to fit this twigs double to the end of this twig then the number of positions in the second will be larger in some sense; and so this will exceed my hands grasp; and were you to in some act of the imagination to make my hand twice as large, and so grasp it again, I can always find a larger twig—at least in my imagination. Infinity is that which is always larger; what you are showing is that there is some structure within infinities; that there are infinities within infinities. This is an admirable finding; nevertheless, true infinity is characterised by always being larger; in this sense, true infinity is potential infinity—an infinity that never completes itself and is thus never a completed infinity or an actual—or better—an actualised infinity. Whatever way we complete, we can always find ways of making it larger.

Philodemos: I do not think Philotectes would accept that argument.

Socrates: You are right—he would not—nevertheless he is wrong to reject it. What say you Theaetetus?

Theaetetus: Your argument has some justice to it.

Socrates: True infinity can never be actual; were the world eternal then the past would be an actual infinity which we have already denied; and so it must be some finite duration; a millenia, or ten millenia or some greater epoch; the world then began.

Theaetetus: Did it begin in one place or in every place all at once?

Socrates: If it began everywhere all at once then all these beginnings must some­how be arranged to happen like some kind of prearranged harmony. This is hard to arrange—and maybe an impossibility; but were it to begin all at one place, no arrangement or coordination is necessary; everything is in proximity to everything else.

Theaetetus: So you say this world, that appears to be infinite in extent to our senses, began as a tiny egg or even tinier seed?

Socrates: Yes. And then it hatched, and then world slowly struggled to its own self-existence. It’s a world egg or a cosmic seed. You are right to be cautious too. The world right now only appears to be infinite in extent—as we are—compared to the world so much smaller; it is not actually infinite. By what we said earlier, it is in fact only potentially infinite.

Philodemos: Are you saying the world is growing now?

Socrates: If the world hatched from an egg it most assuredly grew and since it grew then it may still be growing now; though I am inclined to say that it is growing now more slowly than when it first hatched, for the first growth is generally the most stupendous.

Theaetetus: But is this not arguing by analogy? You see a chick hatch from an egg and then you say the world hatched likewise.

Socrates: There are my friend, two forms of argumentation; arguing by deduction, that is logic; and arguing by analogy; the former follows rules and the latter invents rules to follow by; analogy leads, and logic limps far behind.

Theaetetus: Can logic err?

Socrates: Logic cannot err, when it starts from what is true, and then sails on to a further truth by the way of truth—that is by inference or deduction; but it errs by not leaping ahead when it can, and sometimes when it cannot; it never dares, but always proceeds; it arranges what it has in the most harmonious fashion, composing a whole from sundry materials—and this is admirable; but those sundry materials must first be found and gathered; logic does not find them or discover them; it is given them. The truth first, must be revealed, before logic can go work upon it.

Eudoxus: So logic cannot be fundamental. And if logic cannot be fundamental— can mathematics be fundamental? Theaetetus—I think will disagree—and I think, I too may disagree.

Theaetetus: Some say—and I say—Greek geometry has leapt far ahead of the geometry of our Eastern brethren—I speak of the Aegyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians; for where they have found, we have proven; and we have arranged our proofs in a most harmonious fashion making the most economical use both of axioms and inference.

Socrates: This is most admirable and doubtless it makes geometry easier to learn, and doubtless too, it makes geometry easier to guide he who wishes to geometrise;

but do not identify this new method of our geometric brethren with geometry itself; geometry is both larger and wider than this—though were you to ask me—I could not say precisely how—Socrates is not a geometer. It is easy to build a house were I to give you wood, nail, and hammer to build by; and a piece of land to build upon; you need only the idea of the house to hold in your mind and the skill and the effort to build.

Philodemos: So you are saying the axiomatic method of our axiomatic brethren is merely one idea of geometry amongst the many ideas of geometry? But it seems to me that geometry is one—but with many parts.

Socrates: To count is one idea; to be able to add and multiply, a second; to measure lengths, areas and volumes is a third; counting is a form of geometry, and geometry is a form of counting—this is a fourth idea; and to demonstrate relationships between these a fifth; to then prove these relationships a sixth; logic—in the form of proof—as you see comes limping far behind. Our Eastern brethren by bequeathing all this to us have done us all both great good and a great honour, and the pupil has honoured the master, by finding some new idea not known by our masters; and by this, he has not out-mastered his masters as some so eager to make bold our Greek world say and by so saying are beating the Greek drum; but shows he has mastered his materials; we stand not below, as some of our former foremost thinkers have grumbled and complained; and nor above, as some of our latest thinkers have boasted and are still boasting; but as equals; we have set the Greek standard firmly upon the world as a thinking nation amongst other thinking nations; we have shown the world, we can do as well by doing better.

Archytas: If infinity is not to be found in this world, then to what does the word infinite refer to? Is it another name of the One? Is the One the foundation stone of the world?

Socrates: The One is not a number but a sign and signifier and the law of the One is the law of Unity holding in check Multiplicity. It cannot never be fully named, better, described; it exceeds all names and all descriptions. Yet to speak of it, it must be named. It is in the sap of all things, it blooms and shines forth—for those who look and see; like the red of red rose and like the blue of the blue rose. Nothing is completely apart, everything is but a part; even the whole itself, in its aspect of infinity—is a part—it is a part of itself. Out of the One, buds the Two—so say the Pythagoreans and some have said, they had heard it in the words and voice of some Eastern master too; but I say, the truth buds true in the minds of men turned towards the true; and in every land, and in every age, there are men like this—and they are a hidden treasure. What is two, is not merely two, but as Two, a sign and a signifier; it signs differentiation and difference; and this is the veil of the world in all it’s phenomenal insistence, and all it’s phenomenal depth; both inwardly and outwardly; it veils the One; and is it not the most wonderful veil? Who could wish for a better garb? Rainbows, clouds, stars, colours and strange fits of ethereal music; shadows and the night too; the world doth walk in beauty, she is clothed in both light and the night; sublime and radiant, she shines forth; but she never shows her face. He, who first loves, loves her; and this is why, he despairs, his heart is rent into two; the Two is the infinite in its aspect of the finite, in its finitude, in its measure and extension, and in its multiplicity; and Three, the third and last term—is the infinite in its aspect of change, of stability, of continuity, of duration, of growth, of generation, decay and corruption. The One is the womb of the world; a hollow, within which it rests; it is the mother of all things.

Theaetetus: I applaud you fine speech—well said, Socrates. Bravo.

Archytas: I have misgivings. So the One, far from being something actual, is like space, a kind of void?

Socrates: The Void is another name of the One; but it is not the whole of the One, but another of its aspects.

Philodemos: Is this not paradox? Saying one thing, whilst saying and affirming its opposite; can logic sustain such a contradictory thought?

Socrates: When we speak of such difficult matters, it is unavoidable that we slip into paradoxes and into inconsistencies—for we are speaking of things of which it can hardly be described—or understood. Let us begin again. What is change? Change is two—that is it admits of two distinctions. Either something changes because some­thing external to itself causes change, or something changes because of cause internal to itself. There can be no other. Except, of course, a mixture. But this we already admit. The first is like the house, and the second the tree. Now every tree is alike, and every house is alike; and if one is alike to another, then there must be some common law that tempers them, that persuades them to grow alike. I say, some book of law is hidden deep within the seed that the seed consults to grow in accordance with the law of its growth.

Theaetetus: Socrates, what startling images you coin. Now, a master builder may consult a book to build a house, but what of the seed? I might grant you that a book of law may well be hidden within the seed, for a seed is very small. But I say, Socrates, it must be a very small book to be so hidden and quite unlike ours which are bulky with many pages. But what of the tree? Is it within its roots, it’s branches or within the leaves? Socrates: It must be spread through-out the tree, being somehow in all places all at once. Look at our books, our scribes makes copies so a man in Athens can read the same book as a man in Sparta. And is not a tree made up of many parts though it, itself, is a whole?

Theaetetus: So you judge that the fundamental law regulates, builds, tempers and persuades?

Socrates: There is more, a house is built of wood and a tree draws its nourishment from the ground. There must be some substance from which all the things of this world, all it’s shapes that are drawn from.

Theaetetus: So substance must be fundamental as is the law that shapes and forms it?

Socrates: I see no other way.

Eudoxus: So we are back to Two and not One. This One is like the rainbow—no matter how close one gets—it retreats. Perhaps it is but a mirage—a figment of the light and our imagination.

Theaetetus: Yet whilst the wood we build our houses does not change our own law changes. As do our houses. The houses built in our fathers fathers time is different from what is built now. Yet if the law changes, what law is this, can we even call it a law?

Socrates: Again, do we not go from a lower court to a higher court if the first opinion does not agree with us? A law can change in agreement with a higher law. We can call all this the law. The law is one but it also multiple admitting of many variations. When we look in a forest do we not see many types of trees, yet they are all alike in that they grow from seed aiming at the sky and drawing nourishment from the earth.

Theaetetus: And perhaps from the air itself, as we do; for their branches are very much alike as their roots. What is atop the trunk of the tree is very alike beneath it.

Socrates: Symmetry is a principle or law well-beloved by nature. The one half of your face is alike the other half.

Theaetetus: My wife says not since I fought in the Battle of Sybota. Parmenides speaks of being as well-rounded, the sphere being the most rounded and most sym­metrical of things. Is not the sun and the moon both alike in being well-rounded? And the orange in a tree? And a house, though badly rounded, being more alike to a cube is, is it not, if one looks at it from afar, very much a like a sphere? And is not the earth beneath us not well-rounded?

Socrates: If it be as Erasothenes says. The law is well-rounded for it treats all alike. Is not this game of cosmology is a wonderous thing?

Philodemos: You think the cosmos is a playground?

Theaetetus: Yes, for the gods. They play, and we are their playthings. Now, Socrates, let us take a piece of rope; I can bind it into many shapes—or I would if I were a sailor like Philodemos. Come Philodemos, how many ways of knotting a rope do you know?

Philodemos: I know many—though I cannot name many. What! Are you saying that the elements of this world is like a rope knotting itself?

Theaetetus: Or unravelling itself. What now is, is; and it unravels itself into the past; and what is to come, ravels itself; The thread of time upon the loom of earth both knots and unknots. It seems to me that this is no stranger a notion than the atoms of your friend. It has the advantage that it explains it’s own varied shapes. Perhaps your atoms are as knots?

Philodemos: And I thought that Democritus had gotten to the bottom of things but you have outbottomed him! There are more levels to this than one first thinks. This is indeed a knotty problem.

Socrates: And we must unravel it. One notion when looked at closely can appear to be the fruit of another. Notions grow on top of each other.

Philodemos: Yet would you not agree Socrates that what is behind or beneath is more fundamental?

Socrates: It appears this to the eye. But the eye can deceive—was not Homer blind so that he could see the truth with an inner eye. We must develop our inner eye and not be fooled by our senses.

Theaetetus: Surely our senses do not deceive us. Is that not you Socrates in front of me, and Philodemos next to you?

Archytas: And I and Eudoxus, sat here—listening.

Socrates: Yes, to both. Deception here, is not just the truth or the untruth of the senses, for truths can be partial and being partial, many—and the senses, and sense itself—is many. We must relate truths to the whole of the truth, which being whole is one. Though being one and well rounded it must have many sides and those sides relate to each other. Do you not see the courtyard we stand in and the sun that makes all visible? Was not the truth you uttered partial?

Theaetetus: Yet I cannot speak the whole truth every time I am to speak. There would be no time and nor would my many friends be patient with me. Indeed, I would be scolded into silence.

Socrates: Parts make a whole. But what came first the whole or the part? We see the part but not the whole. The whole is not in front of us until every part has taken its place. Yet no part would be in its place if there was no idea of the whole for each part to take its place.

Theaetetus: Are ideas like laws?

Socrates: They are alike. For the most perfect of laws has no being, but acts on being and participates in being, it is eternal, changeless and has universal jurisdiction; and the most perfect of ideas, like that of the Good, or of Justice, or of Beauty are alike in this. They act on being as a potter acts upon clay.

Theaetetus: If the world was once a seed.

Philodemos: Or once an egg.

Theaetetus: A seed is very much like an egg. An egg for plants and trees. Whence came this law?

Philodemos: I know not—but once a sophist did ask me—friend, what came first—the chicken or the egg? And I said to him, what came first, the sophist or his sophistry? And then he laughed, and said, nay he was no sophist, but he did admire thoughts expressed well and with vigour; and then he asked me again, what came first—the chicken or the egg? And then I said to him: it takes a chicken to lay an egg, and a chicken is hatched from an egg. In our everyday experience when we are in the midst of a world unfolding around us, neither is first; what we have is continuity given the mortality of things—everyday, things are reborn anew. Natality born out of mortality and mortality born out of natality; this is the deep measure of the world—cycles, circles and spheres. But nay—let me not stop you Socrates—I am done.

Socrates: Yet Parmenides taught us, what is not, is not; or said differently, out of nothing, comes nothing. What say you Theaetetus?

Theaetetus: By what we have already said, foundations come first. For a house is not built from the roof downwards but upwards from its foundations. It can be done in no other way. A man would be a fool to try otherwise. And god knows there are enough fools in Athens today. Yet, whilst Euclid provided a foundation for our science—geometry, he would have had nothing to found were geometrical ideas not already discovered. I say, Euclid provided a new idea, a new notion that placed the ideas of geometry in place, rendered them more economical, and more elegant. And in this sense it is foundational. Whereas the ideas were first excavated out of the ground in a scattered way, he placed them in such a way that their relationships could be seen at most advantage and with the least effort. It is like he has carved and shaped a cube out of the rough marble. His founding was not a founding but a shaping and a placing upon a pedestal. And he has shown us how we can shape other ideas in the same way. The finds were found by many other men, some lost to time. For example, the art of counting which must have been the first mathematics that any man knew. And dazzling it must have been. It is a fine idea that Euclid had, yet what Euclid introduced was borrowed. It is an idea from law for laws are shaped in such a way. With higher laws limiting, shaping and regulating lower ones and each other. Laws that act on being are outside of being and hence outside of all temporality—that is all generation and corruption—they are eternal in the true sense of eternity.

Philodemos: What is the false sense of eternity?

Theaetetus: A being that began with time, that continued with time, and is here with us now, and will last and last until time itself does end, is not truly eternal but ever-lasting. It came into being with time and goes out of being when time ends.

Socrates: Well said. I applaud your very fine speech. It seems that we are all agreed that law is fundamental. There is no law except there is no no law.

Philodemos: What say Eudoxus and Archytas? Do you recognise both the law within and the law without? The law amongst the community of men and set up between them and over them and in them and the law that guides the stars, the sun and the moon in their motions and the law that guides generation, growth, stability, corruption and decay all around us—and in us too—that is within every sphere of the world and every sphere of man?

Eudoxus: I have always marvelled at two things; the changeless and immortal law that guides the starry heavens in its changes above us all and the moral law that guides men to know the other and his own self.

Archytas: I concur—but add—there is some divine spark that links the two—but in no easy way—it is an arc of justice—and a shadow of the Good. The Good in itself is never known immediately or made explicable. It is like the sun in that its light shines on all and that it is found in the sky—the sky of ideas—that the seeking mind doth find when it steps back from what is immediately in front of it. We know it by the shadows it casts upon the soul of the world, and on the souls of men, making both deeper and more profound. It sounds the bass notes and illuminates all. Some rare men, may see it more than others; for men are various in their talents and their capacities. One law doth take root in our own natures, guiding us towards all that is good and one rooted in nature gives birth to all things; one, in its essence—freedom—though bound by necessity and though full of will, is never wilful and the other, in its essence necessity, though tending—imperceptibly—towards freedom—and both expanding the soul—the soul of man and the soul of the world—and it is this that is sublime and divine, and it is this that is fundamental.

Dedication For Helen Carmichael, Classicist and a lover of poetry, who understood me better than I understood myself and who was the best and most beautiful rose amongst all the roses.