the Eleatics in our part of the world, saying that all things are one;
whose doctrine begins with Xenophanes, and is even older. Ionian, and,
more recently, Sicilian muses speak of a one and many which are held
together by enmity and friendship, ever parting, ever meeting. Some of
them do not insist on the perpetual strife, but adopt a gentler strain, and
speak of alternation only. Whether they are right or not, who can say?
But one thing we can say--that they went on their way without much caring
whether we understood them or not. For tell me, Theaetetus, do you
understand what they mean by their assertion of unity, or by their
combinations and separations of two or more principles? I used to think,
when I was young, that I knew all about not-being, and now I am in great
difficulties even about being.

Let us proceed first to the examination of being. Turning to the dualist
philosophers, we say to them: Is being a third element besides hot and
cold? or do you identify one or both of the two elements with being? At
any rate, you can hardly avoid resolving them into one. Let us next
interrogate the patrons of the one. To them we say: Are being and one two
different names for the same thing? But how can there be two names when
there is nothing but one? Or you may identify them; but then the name will
be either the name of nothing or of itself, i.e. of a name. Again, the
notion of being is conceived of as a whole--in the words of Parmenides,
'like every way unto a rounded sphere.' And a whole has parts; but that
which has parts is not one, for unity has no parts. Is being, then, one,
because the parts of being are one, or shall we say that being is not a
whole? In the former case, one is made up of parts; and in the latter
there is still plurality, viz. being, and a whole which is apart from
being. And being, if not all things, lacks something of the nature of
being, and becomes not-being. Nor can being ever have come into existence,
for nothing comes into existence except as a whole; nor can being have