will spoil the discussion, and will prove the incapacity of the two
disputants. In order to avoid this danger, he proposes that they shall
beat a retreat, and, before they proceed, come to an understanding about
the 'high argument' of the one and the many.

Protarchus agrees to the proposal, but he is under the impression that
Socrates means to discuss the common question--how a sensible object can be
one, and yet have opposite attributes, such as 'great' and 'small,' 'light'
and 'heavy,' or how there can be many members in one body, and the like
wonders. Socrates has long ceased to see any wonder in these phenomena;
his difficulties begin with the application of number to abstract unities
(e.g.'man,' 'good') and with the attempt to divide them. For have these
unities of idea any real existence? How, if imperishable, can they enter
into the world of generation? How, as units, can they be divided and
dispersed among different objects? Or do they exist in their entirety in
each object? These difficulties are but imperfectly answered by Socrates
in what follows.

We speak of a one and many, which is ever flowing in and out of all things,
concerning which a young man often runs wild in his first metaphysical
enthusiasm, talking about analysis and synthesis to his father and mother
and the neighbours, hardly sparing even his dog. This 'one in many' is a
revelation of the order of the world, which some Prometheus first made
known to our ancestors; and they, who were better men and nearer the gods
than we are, have handed it down to us. To know how to proceed by regular
steps from one to many, and from many to one, is just what makes the
difference between eristic and dialectic. And the right way of proceeding
is to look for one idea or class in all things, and when you have found one
to look for more than one, and for all that there are, and when you have
found them all and regularly divided a particular field of knowledge into