CLEINIAS: Very true, and I quite agree.
ATHENIAN: Or, to put the question in another way, making answer to ourselves: If, as most of these philosophers have the audacity to affirm, all things were at rest in one mass, which of the above-mentioned principles of motion would first spring up among them?
CLEINIAS: Clearly the self-moving; for there could be no change in them arising out of any external cause; the change must first take place in themselves.
ATHENIAN: Then we must say that self-motion being the origin of all motions, and the first which arises among things at rest as well as among things in motion, is the eldest and mightiest principle of change, and that which is changed by another and yet moves other is second.
CLEINIAS: Quite true.
ATHENIAN: At this stage of the argument let us put a question.
CLEINIAS: What question?
ATHENIAN: If we were to see this power existing in any earthy, watery, or fiery substance, simple or compound—how should we describe it?
CLEINIAS: You mean to ask whether we should call such a self-moving power life?
ATHENIAN: I do.