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[209d]

Socrates
Then right opinion also would have to do with differences in any given instance?

Theaetetus
At any rate, it seems so.

Socrates
Then what becomes of the addition of reason or explanation to right opinion? For if it is defined as the addition of an opinion of the way in which a given thing differs from the rest, it is an utterly absurd injunction.

Theaetetus
How so?

Socrates
When we have a right opinion of the way in which certain things differ from other things, we are told to acquire a right opinion of the way in which those same things differ from other things! On this plan the twirling of a scytale1 or a pestle or anything of the sort would be as nothing


1 Aσκυτάλη was a staff, especially a staff about which a strip of leather was rolled, on which dispatches were so written that when unrolled they were illegible until rolled again upon another staff of the same size and shape.

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.

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