Theaetetus

​SOCRATES: I will not tell you until I have tried examining in every way. For I should be ashamed on our behalf, while we are in difficulties, if we were forced to admit the sort of things I am saying. But if we find a way out and become free, then at last we shall speak of others as experiencing these things, standing ourselves outside of the ridiculous; but if we are completely baffled, then, humbled, I suppose we shall yield ourselves to the argument, like seasick people, to be trampled upon and treated however it wishes. Listen, then, to how I still find some way out of the inquiry for us. THEAETETUS: Just speak. SOCRATES: I will say that we did not agree correctly when we agreed that it is impossible for someone to opine what he does not know as being those things which he knows, and so to be mistaken; rather, it is in some way possible. THEAETETUS: Do you mean what I too suspected at that time, when we said it was of that sort, namely that sometimes I, knowing Socrates, but seeing from afar another whom I do not know, thought him to be Socrates whom I know? For it does indeed happen in such a case as you describe. SOCRATES: Did we not, then, reject it, because it made us who know the things we know not know them? THEAETETUS: Certainly indeed. SOCRATES: For let us not set it down in that way, but as follows: perhaps in some way we shall be agreed with, but perhaps we shall be resisted. However, we are held in such a state that it is necessary to turn every argument upside down and test it. Examine, then, if I am saying anything. Is it possible for one who does not know something earlier to learn it later? THEAETETUS: Yes, indeed. SOCRATES: And again, another thing and another? THEAETETUS: Why not? SOCRATES: Set down for me, then, for the sake of the argument, that there is in our souls a waxen block, in one person larger, in another smaller, and in one of purer wax, in another of more muddy and harder, in some of wetter, and in some of moderate quality. THEAETETUS: I set it down. SOCRATES: Let us say, then, that this is a gift of Memory, the mother of the Muses, and that into this, whatever we wish to remember of what we see or hear or think of ourselves, we imprint, holding it under our senses and thoughts, just as we stamp the marks of rings; and that whatever is imprinted, we remember and know as long as its image is in it; but whatever is erased or cannot be imprinted, we have forgotten and do not know. THEAETETUS: Let it be so. SOCRATES: One, then, who knows these things, but is examining something of what he sees or hears, watch if indeed he might opine falsely in such a way. THEAETETUS: In what sort of way, indeed? SOCRATES: By thinking that the things he knows are at one time the things he knows, and at another time the things he does not. For we did not agree correctly in our previous agreement when we said these things were impossible. THEAETETUS: But how do you say it now?