R: Truth is that by which anything that is true is true?
A: Certainly.
R: Nothing is said to be true except what is not false?
A: It would be silly to doubt it.
R: Is not that false which has a certain likeness to something, but is not that to which it bears resemblance?
A: To nothing else would I more freely give the name of false. And yet that is commonly called false which is very unlike the true.
R: Undeniably. But there is always some imitation of the true.
A: But how? When we are told that Medea joined together winged serpents and sped through the air, there is no imitation of what is true. For the tale is not true, and there can be no imitation of what does not exist.
R: Quite right. But observe that a thing which does not exist cannot even be said to be false. If it is false it exists. If it does not exist it is not false.
A: Are we not, then, to say that that monstrous story about Medea is false?
R: Not exactly. If it is false, how is it monstrous?
A: Here is a surprising thing. When I hear of "Huge winged serpents joined together by a yoke" I am not to say it is false.
R: Of course you are, but that implies something that exists.
A: What exists?
R: The statement expressed in that verse.
A: And where is there any imitation of true in it?
R: Because it is stated as if Medea had really done it. A false statement is expressed exactly like a true one....
A: Now I understand that there is a great difference between mere statements and the objects about which statements are made....The falsehood lies not in our statement but in the material objects about which it is made.
Soliloquies Book II, 29.
