Theaetetus

​SOCRATES: I have a certain hesitation, lest we examine Melissus and the others who say the whole is one and at rest in a crude manner, but I feel this less than toward Parmenides, who is one. For Parmenides appears to me, in the words of Homer, to be “both venerable and awesome.” For indeed I met the man when I was very young and he was very old, and he seemed to me to possess a depth that was altogether noble. I fear, then, lest we might not understand what is said, and still more fail to comprehend what he had in mind when he spoke, and, most important of all, that the question for the sake of which this discussion was started—about what knowledge is—might become unexamined because of the discussions breaking in on us, if one is to listen to them. Especially since the discussion we are now raising is of an unmanageable size; if one is to examine it as a side issue, it would suffer an unworthy treatment, and if sufficiently, by being prolonged it will make the subject of knowledge disappear. But we must do neither, but rather we must try to deliver Theaetetus by our obstetric art from the things he is pregnant with concerning knowledge. THEODORUS: Indeed we must, if you think so, do this. SOCRATES: Then consider this further point, Theaetetus, concerning what has been said. For you answered that perception is knowledge, did you not? THEAETETUS: Yes. SOCRATES: If, then, someone should ask you this: “By what does a human being see white and black things, and by what does he hear high and low sounds?” You would say, I think, “With eyes and ears.” THEAETETUS: I would. SOCRATES: A casual use of names and verbs, without examining them with precision, is for the most part not ungenerous, but rather its opposite is illiberal, yet sometimes it is necessary, just as now it is necessary to take hold of your answer, in that it is not correct. For consider: which answer is more correct, that eyes are that by which we see, or that through which we see; and ears that by which we hear, or that through which we hear? THEAETETUS: Through which we perceive each of them, it seems to me, Socrates, rather than by which. SOCRATES: Yes, for it would be strange, my boy, if many perceptions were seated in us as if in wooden horses, and did not all tend together toward some one idea, whether soul or whatever one ought to call it, by which, through these as instruments, we perceive all perceptible things. THEAETETUS: Indeed, it seems to me in this way rather than in that. SOCRATES: It is for this very reason that I am precise with you, to see whether by some same part of ourselves we reach white and black things through the eyes, and other things again through other organs; and will you be able, when asked, to refer all such things to the body? But perhaps it is better that you yourself say it in answering, rather than that I busy myself on your behalf. Tell me, then: do you not place all the things through which you perceive hot, hard, light, and sweet as belonging to the body? Or to something else? THEAETETUS: To nothing else.