“To me it does,” said Cebes.

104.  “Consider this further.  I thought that I had formed a right opinion, when, on seeing a tall man standing by a short one, I judged that he was taller by the head, and in like manner, one horse than another; and, still more clearly than this, ten appeared to me to be more than eight by two being added to them, and that two cubits are greater than one cubit by exceeding it a half.”

“But now,” said Cebes, “what think you of these matters?”

“By Jupiter!” said he, “I am far from thinking that I know the cause of these, for that I can not even persuade myself of this:  when a person has added one to one, whether the one to which the addition has been made has become two, or whether that which has been added, and that to which the addition has been made, have become two by the addition of the one to the other.  For I wonder if, when each of these was separate from the other, each was one, and they were not yet two; but when they have approached nearer each other this should be the cause of their becoming two—­namely, the union by which they have been placed nearer one another. 105.  Nor yet, if any person should divide one, am I able to persuade myself that this, their division, is the cause of its becoming two.  For this cause is the contrary to the former one of their becoming two; for then it was because they were brought nearer to each other, and the one was added to the other; but now it is because one is removed and separated from the other.  Nor do I yet persuade myself that I know why one is one, nor, in a word, why any thing else is produced, or perishes, or exists, according to this method of proceeding; but I mix up another method of my own at random, for this I can on no account give in to.”

“But, having once heard a person reading from a book, written, as he said, by Anaxagoras, and which said that it is intelligence that sets in order and is the cause of all things, I was delighted with this cause, and it appeared to me in a manner to be well that intelligence should be the cause of all things, and I considered with myself, if this is so, that the regulating intelligence orders all things, and disposes each in such way as will be best for it. 106.  If any one, then, should desire to discover the cause of every thing, in what way it is produced, or perishes, or exists, he must discover this respecting it—­in what way it is best for it either to exist, or to suffer, or do any thing else.  From this mode of reasoning, then, it is proper that a man should consider nothing else, both with respect to himself and others, than what is most excellent and best; and it necessarily follows that this same person must also know that which is worst, for that the knowledge of both of them is the same.  Thus reasoning with myself, I was delighted to think I had found in Anaxagoras a preceptor who would instruct me in the causes of things, agreeably to my own mind, and that he would inform me, first, whether the earth