Theaetetus

​THEODORUS: Socrates, the man is my friend, just as you said just now. So I would not accept Protagoras being refuted through my agreement, nor on the other hand would I oppose you contrary to my own opinion. So take Theaetetus again; at any rate just now he seemed to respond to you very properly. SOCRATES: Would you, then, Theodorus, if you went to Lacedaemon, to the wrestling schools, expect to watch others naked, some of them of poor physique, and not yourself strip and show your own form in turn? THEODORUS: But why indeed do you think otherwise, if they were going to permit me and be persuaded? Just as now I think I shall persuade you to let me watch and not drag me to the gymnasium since I am already stiff, but to wrestle with the one who is younger and more flexible. SOCRATES: Well, if it is pleasing to you in this way, Theodorus, ”it is not displeasing to me either,” as the proverb-mongers say. So we must go back again to the wise Theaetetus. Tell me then, Theaetetus, first as to what we have just gone through, do you not wonder if you should suddenly turn out to be in no way inferior in wisdom to any man whatever, or even to the gods? Or do you think the Protagorean “measure” is said any less of gods than of men? THEAETETUS: By Zeus, not I, certainly! And as to what you ask, I wonder at it extremely. For when we were going through the way they say that what seems to each person is also so for the one to whom it seems, it appeared to me to be very well said; but now it has suddenly shifted to the opposite. SOCRATES: For you are young, my dear boy; so you respond quickly to popular harangues and are persuaded. For Protagoras, or someone else on his behalf, will say in reply to this: “O noble boys and old men, you sit together and harangue the crowd, dragging the gods into the midst, whom I exclude from both speaking and writing about them, as to whether they exist or do not exist; and you say things which the multitude would accept upon hearing, namely that it is terrible if each of us humans is to differ in no way in wisdom from any beast of pasture. But you state no proof or necessity of any kind, but you use probability; if Theodorus or any other of the geometers should wish to use this in doing geometry, he would not be worth even a single penny. Consider, then, you and Theodorus, whether you will accept, on such great matters, arguments spoken on the basis of plausibility and probabilities.”

​THEAETETUS: But that is not just, Socrates; neither you nor we would say so. SOCRATES: Then we must examine it in another way, as it seems, according to your and Theodorus’ opinion. THEAETETUS: Yes, in another way altogether. SOCRATES: Let us then look at it in this way, to see whether knowledge and perception are indeed the same or different. For it was to this, I suppose, that our whole argument was tending, and for the sake of this we stirred up all these many strange things. Is it not so? THEAETETUS: Entirely so. SOCRATES: Shall we then agree that whatever we perceive by seeing or hearing, we also at the same time know all of these? For example, before we have learned the language of foreigners, shall we say that we do not hear them when they speak, or that we both hear and know what they are saying? And again, if we do not know letters, when we look at them, shall we maintain that we do not see them, or that we know them, since indeed we see them? THEAETETUS: We shall say, Socrates, that we know just this very part of them which we see and hear; of the letters, we both see and know the shape and color, and of the words, we both hear and at the same time know the high and low pitch; but as for what the grammar teachers and interpreters teach about them, we neither perceive it by seeing or hearing, nor do we know it. SOCRATES: Excellent, Theaetetus, and it is not worth disputing with you on this, so that you may also grow. But look at this other thing that is approaching, and consider how we shall push it aside. THEAETETUS: What sort of thing is it? SOCRATES: Something like this: if someone should ask: “Is it possible for one who has ever become a knower of something, while still having memory of this very thing and preserving it, at the very time when he remembers it, not to know this very thing which he remembers?” But I am being wordy, as it seems, when I wish to ask simply whether one who has learned something and remembers it does not know it. THEAETETUS: How could that be, Socrates? For what you say would be a monstrosity. SOCRATES: Am I then talking nonsense? But consider. Do you not say that seeing is perceiving, and that sight is perception? THEAETETUS: I do. SOCRATES: Therefore, the one who has seen something has become a knower of that which he saw, according to the argument just now? THEAETETUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Well then, do you say that memory is something? THEAETETUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Is it of nothing, or of something? THEAETETUS: Of something, surely. SOCRATES: Of things he learned and perceived, then, of such things? THEAETETUS: What else? SOCRATES: And what a man has seen, he remembers sometimes, doesn’t he? THEAETETUS: He does. SOCRATES: Even when he has closed his eyes? Or if he has done this, has he forgotten? THEAETETUS: Why, Socrates, it would be a terrible thing to say that!