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[294e] it would not be the beautiful for which we are looking. For that makes things be beautiful, but the same element could not make things both appear and be beautiful, nor could it make them both appear and be anything else whatsoever. Let us choose, then, whether we think that the appropriate is that which makes things appear or be beautiful.

Hippias
That which makes them appear so, in my opinion, Socrates.

Socrates
Whew! Our perception of what the beautiful is has fled away and gone, Hippias, since the appropriate has been found to be something other than the beautiful.

Hippias
Yes, by Zeus, Socrates, and to me that is very queer.


Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925.

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