first was something about how a baker could bake fifty identical cookies.
Sophie had to think very carefully about that, because it definitely wouldn’t be
easy. When her mother occasionally baked a batch of cookies, they were never all
exactly the same. But then she was not an expert pastry cook; sometimes the kitchen
looked as if a bomb had hit it. Even the cookies they bought at the baker’s were never
exactly the same. Every single cookie was shaped separately in the baker’s hands.
Then a satisfied smile spread over Sophie’s face. She remembered how once
she and her father went shopping while her mother was busy baking Christmas
cookies. When they got back there were a lot of gingerbread men spread out on the
kitchen table. Even though they weren’t all perfect, in a way they were all the same.
And why was that? Obviously because her mother had used the same mold for all of
them.
Sophie felt so pleased with herself for having remembered the incident that she
pronounced herself done with the first question. If a baker makes fifty absolutely
identical cookies, he must be using the same pastry mold for all of them. And that’s
that!
Then the video-Plato had looked into the camera and asked why all horses were
the same. But they weren’t, at all! On the contrary, Sophie thought no two horses
were the same, just as no two people were the same.
She was ready to give up on that one when she remembered what she had
thought about the cookies. No one of them was exactly like any of the others. Some
were a bit thicker than the others, and some were broken. But still, everyone could see
that they were—in a way— “exactly the same.”
What Plato was really asking was perhaps why a horse was always a horse, and
not, for example, a cross between a horse and a pig. Because even though some horses
were as brown as bears and others were as white as lambs, all horses had something in
common. Sophie had yet to meet a horse with six or eight legs, for example.
But surely Plato couldn’t believe that what made all horses alike was that they
were made with the same mold?
Then Plato had asked her a really difficult question. Does man have an immortal
soul? That was something Sophie felt quite unqualified to answer. All she knew was
that dead bodies were either cremated or buried, so there was no future for them. If
man had an immortal soul, one would have to believe that a person consisted of two
separate parts: a body that gets worn out after many years—and a soul that operates
more or less independently of what happens to the body. Her grandmother had said
once that she felt it was only her body that was old. Inside she had always been the
same young girl-The thought of the “young girl” led Sophie to the last question: Are
women and men equally sensible? She was not so sure about that. It depended on
what Plato meant by sensible.
Something the philosopher had said about Socrates came into her mind.
Socrates had pointed out that everyone could understand philosophical truths if they
just used their common sense. He had also said that a slave had the same common
sense as a nobleman. Sophie was sure that he would also have said that women had
the same common sense as men.
While she sat thinking, there was a sudden rustling in the hedge, and the sound
of something puffing and blowing like a steam engine. The next second, the golden
Labrador slipped into the den. It had a large envelope in its mouth.
“Hermes!” cried Sophie. “Drop it! Drop it!” The dog dropped the envelope in
Sophie’s lap, and Sophie stretched out her hand to pat the dog’s head. “Good boy,
Hermes!” she said. The dog lay down and allowed itself to be patted. But after a