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[228c]

Stranger
But if things which partake of motion and aim at some particular mark pass beside the mark and miss it on every occasion when they try to hit it, shall we say that this happens to them through right proportion to one another or, on the contrary, through disproportion?1

Theaetetus
Evidently through disproportion.

Stranger
But yet we know that every soul, if ignorant of anything, is ignorant against its will.

Theaetetus
Very much so.

Stranger
Now being ignorant is nothing else than


1 The connection between disproportion and missing the mark is not obvious. The explanation that a missile (e.g. an arrow) which is not evenly balanced will not fly straight, fails to take account of the words πρὸς ἄλληλα. The idea seems rather to be that moving objects of various sizes, shapes, and rates of speed must interfere with each other.

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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