after another, that you may taste them. And I hope that I may at last help
to bring your own opinion into the light of day: when this has been
accomplished, then we will determine whether what you have brought forth is
only a wind-egg or a real and genuine birth. Therefore, keep up your
spirits, and answer like a man what you think.

THEAETETUS: Ask me.

SOCRATES: Then once more: Is it your opinion that nothing is but what
becomes?--the good and the noble, as well as all the other things which we
were just now mentioning?

THEAETETUS: When I hear you discoursing in this style, I think that there
is a great deal in what you say, and I am very ready to assent.

SOCRATES: Let us not leave the argument unfinished, then; for there still
remains to be considered an objection which may be raised about dreams and
diseases, in particular about madness, and the various illusions of hearing
and sight, or of other senses. For you know that in all these cases the
esse-percipi theory appears to be unmistakably refuted, since in dreams and
illusions we certainly have false perceptions; and far from saying that
everything is which appears, we should rather say that nothing is which
appears.

THEAETETUS: Very true, Socrates.

SOCRATES: But then, my boy, how can any one contend that knowledge is
perception, or that to every man what appears is?

THEAETETUS: I am afraid to say, Socrates, that I have nothing to answer,