No! he answered. Rather it must be that they shall seem, in a
manner, both beautiful and ugly; and all the rest you ask of.
Well! The many double things:—Do they seem to be at all less
half than double?
Not at all.
And great, in truth, and little, and light, and heavy—will they at all more truly be called by these names which we may give them, than by the opposite names?
No! he said; but each of them will always hold of both.
Every several instance of 'The Many,' then—is it, more truly than it is not, that which one may affirm it to be?
It is like people at supper-parties he said (very Attic supper- parties!) playing on words, and the children's riddle about the eunuch and his fling round the bat—with what, and on what, the riddle says he hit it; for these things also seem to set both ways, and it is not possible, fixedly, to conceive any one of them either to be, or not to be; neither both, nor the one, nor the other.
Have you anything then you can do with them; or anywhere you can place them with fairer effect than in that position between being and the being not? For presumably they will not appear more obscure than what is not, so as not to be, still more; nor more luminous than what is, so as to be, even more than that. We have found then that the many customary notions of the many, about Beauty and the rest are revolved somewhere between not-being and being unmixedly.
So we have.
And agreed, at least, at the outset, that if anything of this sort presented itself, it must be declared matter not of knowledge, but of opinion; to be apprehended by the intermediate faculty; as it wanders unfixed, there, between. Republic, 478.