In the beginning of Parmenides, the character Parmenides asks the young Socrates four questions about the theory of forms and their ability to explain our knowing:
1. Are there forms of equality and sameness, rest and motion, etc., and if so, are there forms of the opposities of these?
2. Are there forms of the just, the beautiful, the good, and so forth?
3. Are there forms of composite things, such as human beings, fire, water, etc.?
4. What about forms of lowly, crude, undignified things like dirt?
Young Socrates is certain about the first two, becomes shaky on the third (forms of composite things create complexities, whereas the point of the theory is to simplify and explain), and rejects the fourth, though Parmenides hints that he will have to include forms of such things if he is to maintain the theory consistently.
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I found it a little disappointing that Socrates felt so reticent about admitting forms to coincide with things like dirt, not to mention the assumption that such a thing is "undignified." I interpret this as an exclusion of an undeniable part of reality, a part so vital to life no less, from his hypothetical grand scheme. I would go so far as to say that this exclusion comes very close to a form of denial, and I think that Socrates would have done well to have rethought his evaluation of dirt.
One way to read this (and it's Parmenides' own line) is that an adolescent Socrates hasn't yet thought this through, still too concerned with "the opinions of others."
Of course, our own era has only just begun to understand the complexities and indispensability of such seemingly simple and "base" things as dirt (one gram of which contains about a billion microbes, many of which co-evolved with agriculture, and are now locked into complete interdependence with humans and other life forms). Is it reasonable to expect a teenage Socrates to understand it?
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