Cleinias:  You are quite right.

Athenian:  Shall we, then, take this as the next point to which our attention should be directed?

Cleinias:  By all means.

Athenian:  Let us be on our guard lest this most deceptive argument with its youthful looks, beguiling us old men, give us the slip and make a laughing-stock of us.  Who knows but we may be aiming at the greater, and fail of attaining the lesser?  Suppose that we three have to pass a rapid river, and I, being the youngest of the three and experienced in rivers, take upon me the duty of making the attempt first by myself; leaving you in safety on the bank, I am to examine whether the river is passable by older men like yourselves, and if such appears to be the case then I shall invite you to follow, and my experience will help to convey you across; but if the river is impassable by you, then there will have been no danger to anybody but myself—­would not that seem to be a very fair proposal?  I mean to say that the argument in prospect is likely to be too much for you, out of your depth and beyond your strength, and I should be afraid that the stream of my questions might create in you who are not in the habit of answering, giddiness and confusion of mind, and hence a feeling of unpleasantness and unsuitableness might arise.  I think therefore that I had better first ask the questions and then answer them myself while you listen in safety; in that way I can carry on the argument until I have completed the proof that the soul is prior to the body.

Cleinias:  Excellent, Stranger, and I hope that you will do as you propose.

Athenian:  Come, then, and if ever we are to call upon the Gods, let us call upon them now in all seriousness to come to the demonstration of their own existence.  And so holding fast to the rope we will venture upon the depths of the argument.  When questions of this sort are asked of me, my safest answer would appear to be as follows:  Some one says to me, ’O Stranger, are all things at rest and nothing in motion, or is the exact opposite of this true, or are some things in motion and others at rest?’ To this I shall reply that some things are in motion and others at rest.  ’And do not things which move move in a place, and are not the things which are at rest at rest in a place?’ Certainly.  ’And some move or rest in one place and some in more places than one?’ You mean to say, we shall rejoin, that those things which rest at the centre move in one place, just as the circumference goes round of globes which are said to be at rest?  ‘Yes.’  And we observe that, in the revolution, the motion which carries round the larger and the lesser circle at the same time is proportionally distributed to greater and smaller, and is greater and smaller in a certain proportion.  Here is a wonder which might be thought an impossibility, that the same motion should impart swiftness and slowness