Theaetetus
of the brutes, which is a telling argument with the multitude, but not
one word of proof or demonstration do you offer. All is probability with
you, and yet surely you and Theodorus had better reflect whether you
are disposed to admit of probability and figures of speech in matters
of such importance. He or any other mathematician who argued from
probabilities and likelihoods in geometry, would not be worth an ace.
THEAETETUS: But neither you nor we, Socrates, would be satisfied with
such arguments.
SOCRATES: Then you and Theodorus mean to say that we must look at the
matter in some other way?
THEAETETUS: Yes, in quite another way.
SOCRATES: And the way will be to ask whether perception is or is not the
same as knowledge; for this was the real point of our argument, and with
a view to this we raised (did we not?) those many strange questions.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Shall we say that we know every thing which we see and hear?
for example, shall we say that not having learned, we do not hear the
language of foreigners when they speak to us? or shall we say that
we not only hear, but know what they are saying? Or again, if we see
letters which we do not understand, shall we say that we do not see
them? or shall we aver that, seeing them, we must know them?
THEAETETUS: We shall say, Socrates, that we know what we actually see
and hear of them--that is to say, we see and know the figure and colour
of the letters, and we hear and know the elevation or depression of the
sound of them; but we do not perceive by sight and hearing, or know,
that which grammarians and interpreters teach about them.
SOCRATES: Capital, Theaetetus; and about this there shall be no dispute,
because I want you to grow; but there is another difficulty coming,
which you will also have to repulse.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
SOCRATES: Some one will say, Can a man who has ever known anything, and
still has and preserves a memory of that which he knows, not know that
which he remembers at the time when he remembers? I have, I fear, a
tedious way of putting a simple question, which is only, whether a man
who has learned, and remembers, can fail to know?
THEAETETUS: Impossible, Socrates; the supposition is monstrous.
SOCRATES: Am I talking nonsense, then? Think: is not seeing perceiving,
and is not sight perception?
THEAETETUS: True.
SOCRATES: And if our recent definition holds, every man knows that which
he has seen?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And you would admit that there is such a thing as memory?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And is memory of something or of nothing?
THEAETETUS: Of something, surely.
SOCRATES: Of things learned and perceived, that is?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Often a man remembers that which he has seen?
THEAETETUS: True.
SOCRATES: And if he closed his eyes, would he forget?
THEAETETUS: Who, Socrates, would dare to say so?
SOCRATES: But we must say so, if the previous argument is to be
maintained.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean? I am not quite sure that I understand you,
though I have a strong suspicion that you are right.
SOCRATES: As thus: he who sees knows, as we say, that which he sees; for
perception and sight and knowledge are admitted to be the same.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: But he who saw, and has knowledge of that which he saw,
remembers, when he closes his eyes, that which he no longer sees.
THEAETETUS: True.
SOCRATES: And seeing is knowing, and therefore not-seeing is
not-knowing?
THEAETETUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then the inference is, that a man may have attained the
knowledge of something, which he may remember and yet not know, because
he does not see; and this has been affirmed by us to be a monstrous
supposition.
THEAETETUS: Most true.
SOCRATES: Thus, then, the assertion that knowledge and perception are
one, involves a manifest impossibility?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then they must be distinguished?
THEAETETUS: I suppose that they must.
SOCRATES: Once more we shall have to begin, and ask 'What is knowledge?'
and yet, Theaetetus, what are we going to do?
THEAETETUS: About what?
SOCRATES: Like a good-for-nothing cock, without having won the victory,
we walk away from the argument and crow.
THEAETETUS: How do you mean?
SOCRATES: After the manner of disputers (Lys.; Phaedo; Republic), we
were satisfied with mere verbal consistency, and were well pleased if in
this way we could gain an advantage. Although professing not to be mere
Eristics, but philosophers, I suspect that we have unconsciously fallen
into the error of that ingenious class of persons.
THEAETETUS: I do not as yet understand you.
SOCRATES: Then I will try to explain myself: just now we asked the
question, whether a man who had learned and remembered could fail to
know, and we showed that a person who had seen might remember when he
had his eyes shut and could not see, and then he would at the same
time remember and not know. But this was an impossibility. And so the
Protagorean fable came to nought, and yours also, who maintained that
knowledge is the same as perception.
THEAETETUS: True.
SOCRATES: And yet, my friend, I rather suspect that the result would
have been different if Protagoras, who was the father of the first of
the two brats, had been alive; he would have had a great deal to say on
their behalf. But he is dead, and we insult over his orphan child; and
even the guardians whom he left, and of whom our friend Theodorus is
one, are unwilling to give any help, and therefore I suppose that I must
take up his cause myself, and see justice done?
THEODORUS: Not I, Socrates, but rather Callias, the son of Hipponicus,
is guardian of his orphans. I was too soon diverted from the
abstractions of dialectic to geometry. Nevertheless, I shall be grateful
to you if you assist him.
SOCRATES: Very good, Theodorus; you shall see how I will come to the
rescue. If a person does not attend to the meaning of terms as they are
commonly used in argument, he may be involved even in greater paradoxes
than these. Shall I explain this matter to you or to Theaetetus?
THEODORUS: To both of us, and let the younger answer; he will incur less
disgrace if he is discomfited.
SOCRATES: Then now let me ask the awful question, which is this:--Can a
man know and also not know that which he knows?
THEODORUS: How shall we answer, Theaetetus?
THEAETETUS: He cannot, I should say.
SOCRATES: He can, if you maintain that seeing is knowing. When you are
imprisoned in a well, as the saying is, and the self-assured adversary
closes one of your eyes with his hand, and asks whether you can see
his cloak with the eye which he has closed, how will you answer the
inevitable man?
THEAETETUS: I should answer, 'Not with that eye but with the other.'
SOCRATES: Then you see and do not see the same thing at the same time.
THEAETETUS: Yes, in a certain sense.
SOCRATES: None of that, he will reply; I do not ask or bid you answer
in what sense you know, but only whether you know that which you do not
know. You have been proved to see that which you do not see; and you
have already admitted that seeing is knowing, and that not-seeing is
not-knowing: I leave you to draw the inference.
THEAETETUS: Yes; the inference is the contradictory of my assertion.
SOCRATES: Yes, my marvel, and there might have been yet worse things in
store for you, if an opponent had gone on to ask whether you can have a
sharp and also a dull knowledge, and whether you can know near, but not
at a distance, or know the same thing with more or less intensity,
and so on without end. Such questions might have been put to you by a
light-armed mercenary, who argued for pay. He would have lain in wait
for you, and when you took up the position, that sense is knowledge,
he would have made an assault upon hearing, smelling, and the other
senses;--he would have shown you no mercy; and while you were lost in
envy and admiration of his wisdom, he would have got you into his
net, out of which you would not have escaped until you had come to an
understanding about the sum to be paid for your release. Well, you ask,
and how will Protagoras reinforce his position? Shall I answer for him?
THEAETETUS: By all means.
SOCRATES: He will repeat all those things which we have been urging on
his behalf, and then he will close with us in disdain, and say:--The
worthy Socrates asked a little boy, whether the same man could remember
and not know the same thing, and the boy said No, because he was
frightened, and could not see what was coming, and then Socrates made
fun of poor me. The truth is, O slatternly Socrates, that when you ask
questions about any assertion of mine, and the person asked is found
tripping, if he has answered as I should have answered, then I am
refuted, but if he answers something else, then he is refuted and not
I. For do you really suppose that any one would admit the memory which a
man has of an impression which has passed away to be the same with that
which he experienced at the time? Assuredly not. Or would he hesitate to
acknowledge that the same man may know and not know the same thing? Or,
if he is afraid of making this admission, would he ever grant that one
who has become unlike is the same as before he became unlike? Or would
he admit that a man is one at all, and not rather many and infinite as
the changes which take place in him? I speak by the card in order to
avoid entanglements of words. But, O my good sir, he will say, come to
the argument in a more generous spirit; and either show, if you can,
that our sensations are not relative and individual, or, if you admit
them to be so, prove that this does not involve the consequence that the
appearance becomes, or, if you will have the word, is, to the individual
only. As to your talk about pigs and baboons, you are yourself behaving
like a pig, and you teach your hearers to make sport of my writings in
the same ignorant manner; but this is not to your credit. For I declare
that the truth is as I have written, and that each of us is a measure
of existence and of non-existence. Yet one man may be a thousand times
better than another in proportion as different things are and appear
to him. And I am far from saying that wisdom and the wise man have no
existence; but I say that the wise man is he who makes the evils which
appear and are to a man, into goods which are and appear to him. And
I would beg you not to press my words in the letter, but to take the
meaning of them as I will explain them. Remember what has been already
said,--that to the sick man his food appears to be and is bitter, and to
the man in health the opposite of bitter. Now I cannot conceive that one
of these men can be or ought to be made wiser than the other: nor can
you assert that the sick man because he has one impression is foolish,
and the healthy man because he has another is wise; but the one state
requires to be changed into the other, the worse into the better. As
in education, a change of state has to be effected, and the sophist
accomplishes by words the change which the physician works by the aid
of drugs. Not that any one ever made another think truly, who previously
thought falsely. For no one can think what is not, or, think anything
different from that which he feels; and this is always true. But as the
inferior habit of mind has thoughts of kindred nature, so I conceive
that a good mind causes men to have good thoughts; and these which the
inexperienced call true, I maintain to be only better, and not truer
than others. And, O my dear Socrates, I do not call wise men tadpoles:
far from it; I say that they are the physicians of the human body, and
the husbandmen of plants--for the husbandmen also take away the evil and