What is Shape and Color?
Table of Contents
A shape is the only thing which always follows colour.
I have a similar definition of virtue.
But, Socrates, it is such a simple answer.
If shape always follows colour, then how would we answer a person who did not know colour?
A dialectician would answer to speak the truth and use premises which the person interrogated would admit.
There is such a thing as an end, or termination, or extremity?
All these words I use in the same sense.
You would speak of a surface and also of a solid, as for example in geometry.
You are now able to understand my definition of figure – that in which the solid ends; or, more concisely, the limit of solid.
What is colour?
Please remember Gorgias’ definition of virtue.
Gorgias, you, and Empedocles say that there are:
- certain effluences [light] of existence.
- passages into which and through which the effluences pass
Some of the effluences fit into the passages.
Some of them are too small or too large.
Pindar defines colour as an effluence of form, commensurate with sight, and palpable to sense.
That is an admirable answer.
It is one which you habitually hear. You may explain color in the same way the nature of sound and smell, and of many other similar phenomena.
The answer, Meno, was in the orthodox solemn vein, and therefore was more acceptable to you than the other answer about figure.
But I think that the other was the better.
What virtue is in the universal?
I think that virtue is when he who desires the honourable is able to provide it for himself. So the poet and I say:
‘Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the power of attaining them.’
He who desires the honourable also desires the good.
There are some who desire the evil and others who desire the good.
They think that the evils which they desire:
- are good
- are evil yet desire them anyway
A man who knows evils to be evils and desires them anyway
Desire is of possession. And does he think that the evils will do good to him who possesses them, or does he know that they will do him harm?
There are some who think that the evils will do them good, and others who know that they will do them harm.
Those who think that evils will do them good do not know that they are evils.
Those who are ignorant of their nature do not desire them.
But they desire what they think is good although it is really evil.
They are mistaken, and suppose the evil to be good.
Those who desire evils, and think that evils are hurtful to the possessor of them, know that they will be hurt by them.
They suppose that those who are hurt are miserable in proportion to the hurt which is inflicted on them.
But no one desired to be miserable and ill-fated.
Therefore no one would desire evil since misery is the desire and possession of evil.
Yes. And I admit that nobody desires evil.
But you said just now that virtue is the desire and power of attaining good. Then the desire of good is common to all. One man is no better than another in that respect?
If one man is not better than another in desiring good, he must be better in the power of attaining it. Then, according to your definition, virtue would be the power of attaining good.