STRANGER: Very good; and now say, do we venture to utter the forbidden word 'not-being'?
THEAETETUS: Certainly we do.
STRANGER: Let us be serious then, and consider the question neither in strife nor play: suppose that one of the hearers of Parmenides was asked, 'To what is the term "not-being" to be applied?'—do you know what sort of object he would single out in reply, and what answer he would make to the enquirer?
THEAETETUS: That is a difficult question, and one not to be answered at all by a person like myself.
STRANGER: There is at any rate no difficulty in seeing that the predicate 'not-being' is not applicable to any being.
THEAETETUS: None, certainly.
STRANGER: And if not to being, then not to something.
THEAETETUS: Of course not.
STRANGER: It is also plain, that in speaking of something we speak of being, for to speak of an abstract something naked and isolated from all being is impossible.
THEAETETUS: Impossible.