Soc. Then let us have a more definite understanding and establish the principle on which the argument rests.
Pro. What principle ?
Soc. A principle about which all men are always in a difficulty, and some men sometimes against their will.
Pro. Speak plainer.
Soc. The principle which has just turned up, which is a marvel of nature ; for that one should be many or many one, are wonderful propositions ; and he who affirms either is very open to attack.
Pro. Do you mean, when a person says that I, Protarchus, am by nature one and also many, dividing the single “me” into many “mens,” and even opposing them as great and small, light and heavy, and in ten thousand other ways ?
Soc. Those, Protarchus, are the common and acknowledged paradoxes about the one and many, which I may say that everybody has by this time agreed to dismiss as childish and obvious and detrimental to the true course of thought ; and no more favour is shown to that other puzzle, in which a person proves the members and parts of anything to be divided, and then confessing that they are all one, says laughingly in disproof of his own words : Why, here is a miracle, the one is many and infinite, and the many are only one.
Pro. But what, Socrates, are those other marvels connected with this subject which, as you imply, have not yet become common and acknowledged ?
Soc. When, my boy, the one does not belong to the class of things that are born and perish, as in the instances which we were giving, for in those cases, and when unity is of this concrete nature, there is, as I was saying, a universal consent that no refutation is needed ; but when the assertion is made that man is one, or ox is one, or beauty one, or the good one, then the interest which attaches to these and similar unities and the attempt which is made to divide them gives birth to a controversy.
Pro. Of what nature ?
Soc. In the first place, as to whether these unities have a real existence ; and then how each individual unity, being always the same, and incapable either of generation of destruction, but retaining a permanent individuality, can be conceived either as dispersed and multiplied in the infinity of the world of generation, or as still entire and yet divided from itself, which latter would seem to be the greatest impossibility of all, for how can one and the same thing be at the same time in one and in many things ? These, Protarchus, are the real difficulties, and this is the one and many to which they relate ; they are the source of great perplexity if ill decided, and the right determination of them is very helpful.