painter is a man who professes to make all things, and children, who see
his pictures at a distance, sometimes take them for realities: and the
Sophist pretends to know all things, and he, too, can deceive young men,
who are still at a distance from the truth, not through their eyes, but
through their ears, by the mummery of words, and induce them to believe
him. But as they grow older, and come into contact with realities, they
learn by experience the futility of his pretensions. The Sophist, then,
has not real knowledge; he is only an imitator, or image-maker.

And now, having got him in a corner of the dialectical net, let us divide
and subdivide until we catch him. Of image-making there are two kinds,--
the art of making likenesses, and the art of making appearances. The
latter may be illustrated by sculpture and painting, which often use
illusions, and alter the proportions of figures, in order to adapt their
works to the eye. And the Sophist also uses illusions, and his imitations
are apparent and not real. But how can anything be an appearance only?
Here arises a difficulty which has always beset the subject of appearances.
For the argument is asserting the existence of not-being. And this is what
the great Parmenides was all his life denying in prose and also in verse.
'You will never find,' he says, 'that not-being is.' And the words prove
themselves! Not-being cannot be attributed to any being; for how can any
being be wholly abstracted from being? Again, in every predication there
is an attribution of singular or plural. But number is the most real of
all things, and cannot be attributed to not-being. Therefore not-being
cannot be predicated or expressed; for how can we say 'is,' 'are not,'
without number?

And now arises the greatest difficulty of all. If not-being is
inconceivable, how can not-being be refuted? And am I not contradicting
myself at this moment, in speaking either in the singular or the plural of