Page:Theaetetus, Philebus (H. F. Carlill, 1906).pdf/73

THEAETETUS 49

s, who profess to be experts— are no more open to discussion; han lunatics ; they are positively as full of movement as:heir treatises ; and as for keeping to an argument or a question, asking and answeiing quietly in their turn, they lave not the very slightest idea how to do it. Indeed 180 their chief peculiarity, is their entire and absolute lack of repose in every conceivable relation. If you ask any of them anything, they snatch from their quivers, as it were, little oracular aphorisms and let fly at you ; and if you try to get from them an explanation of one statement you are straightway shot with another full of strange metaphors, and you will never be able to arrive at any conclusion at all with any of them. Nor indeed are they my better with each other: on the contrary, they take very good care indeed not to allow anything to be settled in my way, either in argument or in their own minds— think­ing, I presume, that that would be something stationary ; and against what is stationary they have declared war to the knife, and do their best to exterminate it altogether.40S. Possibly, Theodorus, you have only seen them fight­ing, and have never been with them when they are at peace ; for they are not of your school. But I imagine that they speak differently when they aie at leisure and beaching the disciples whom they wish to make like them­selves. T. Pupils, my good sir ! Why, you never find one a pupil of another among these people ; they sprout up unbidden, each just where the inspiration has seized him, and each thinks the other hopelessly ignorant. From men like these, as I was going to say, you can never get a con­nected account of anything, either with their will or against it. The only thing to do is to take their theory from them, and investigate it for oneself as one would a problem. these two sections shows a marked change ; in the one Theodorus, and in the other Theaetetus, are allowed to say a great deal more than usual—a great deal more, indeed, than it is at all natural for them to say. In truth, a conversation is hardly the best vehicle for a set criticism of Heracliteanism, and not much more suitable for an exposition of the categories. 40 This spirited piece of satire is certainly quite out of keeping with the character of Theodorus, who never takes the bit be­tween his teeth in this way in the rest of the dialogue. D