“However,” continued he, “I am now saying nothing new, but what I have always at other times, and in a former part of this discussion, never ceased to say.  I proceed, then, to attempt to explain to you that species of cause which I have busied myself about, and return again to those well-known subjects, and set out from them, laying down as an hypothesis, that there is a certain abstract beauty, and goodness, and magnitude, and so of all other things; which if you grant me, and allow that they do exist, I hope that I shall be able from these to explain the cause to you, and to discover that the soul is immortal.”

“But,” said Cebes, “since I grant you this, you may draw your conclusion at once.”

“But consider,” he said, “what follows from thence, and see if you can agree with me.  For it appears to me that if there is any thing else beautiful besides beauty itself, it is not beautiful for any other reason than because it partakes of that abstract beauty; and I say the same of every thing.  Do you admit such a cause?”

“I do admit it,” he replied.

113.  “I do not yet understand,” he continued, “nor am I able to conceive, those other wise causes; but if any one should tell me why any thing is beautiful, either because it has a blooming florid color, or figure, or any thing else of the kind, I dismiss all other reasons, for I am confounded by them all; but I simply, wholly, and perhaps foolishly, confine myself to this, that nothing else causes it to be beautiful except either the presence or communication of that abstract beauty, by whatever means and in whatever way communicated; for I can not yet affirm this with certainty, but only that by means of beauty all beautiful things become beautiful.  For this appears to me the safest answer to give both to myself and others; and adhering to this, I think that I shall never fall, but that it is a safe answer both for me and any one else to give—­that by means of beauty beautiful things become beautiful.  Does it not also seem so to you?”

“It does.”

“And that by magnitude great things become great, and greater things, greater; and by littleness less things become less?”

“Yes.”

114.  “You would not, then, approve of it, if any one said that one person is greater than another by the head, and that the less is less by the very same thing; but you would maintain that you mean nothing else than that every thing that is greater than another is greater by nothing else than magnitude, and that it is greater on this account—­that is, on account of magnitude; and that the less is less by nothing else than littleness, and on this account less—­that is, on account of littleness; being afraid, I think, lest some opposite argument should meet you if you should say that any one is greater and less by the head; as, first, that the greater is greater, and the less less, by the very same thing; and, next, that the greater is greater by the head, which is small; and that it is monstrous to suppose that any one is great through something small.  Should you not be afraid of this?”