Theaetetus

SOCRATES: In no way, being who I am, though indeed I might if I were an antilogician; if such a man were present even now, he would say that he kept away from these words, and he would severely rebuke us for what I am saying. Since, therefore, we are mediocre, do you want me to dare to say what sort of thing to know is? For it seems to me that it would be of some use. THEAETETUS: Dare, then, by Zeus! And there will be much indulgence for you if you do not keep away from these words. SOCRATES: Have you heard, then, what they say to know is now? THEAETETUS: Perhaps; however, I do not remember at the present moment. SOCRATES: They say, I believe, that it is the having of knowledge. THEAETETUS: True. SOCRATES: Let us, then, make a small change and say the possession of knowledge. THEAETETUS: In what way, then, will you say this differs from that? SOCRATES: Perhaps not at all; but listen to what seems to be and join in examining it. THEAETETUS: If indeed I am able. SOCRATES: To have, then, does not seem to me to be the same as to possess. For example, if someone bought a cloak and was master of it but did not wear it, we would not say that he has it, but indeed we would say that he possesses it. THEAETETUS: Correct indeed. SOCRATES: See, then, whether it is possible in this way also for one who possesses knowledge not to have it, but just as if someone, having hunted wild birds—doves or something else—and having set up an aviary at home, should feed them, we would say in a certain way that he always has them, because indeed he possesses them. Is it not so? THEAETETUS: Yes. SOCRATES: But in another way, that he has none of them, but that a power has become available to him concerning them, since he has made them subject to his hand in his own enclosure, to take and hold them whenever he wishes, by hunting whichever one he always wants, and to let them go again, and that it is permitted to do this as many times as it seems good to him. THEAETETUS: That is so. SOCRATES: Again indeed, just as in the preceding parts we set up some waxen thing—I know not what kind of mold—in our souls, now let us in turn make in each soul an aviary of all kinds of birds, some being in flocks apart from the others, some in small groups, and some solitary, flying wherever they happen through all of them. THEAETETUS: Let it be made indeed. But what from this? SOCRATES: When we are children, we must say that this vessel is empty, and instead of birds we must think of pieces of knowledge; and whichever piece of knowledge one possesses and shuts up in the enclosure, we must say that he has learned or found the thing of which this was the knowledge, and that to know is this. THEAETETUS: Let it be so.

SOCRATES: Consider, then, what names it requires to hunt again whichever of the pieces of knowledge he wishes, and having taken it, to hold it, and again to let it go—whether the same names as at first when he was possessing it, or other ones. You will learn more clearly from this what I mean. For do you call arithmetic an art? THEAETETUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Assume, then, this to be a hunt for pieces of knowledge of all that is even and odd. THEAETETUS: I assume it. SOCRATES: By this art, I think, he himself has the pieces of knowledge of numbers subject to his hand, and the one who hands them over hands them over to another. THEAETETUS: Yes. SOCRATES: And indeed we call the one who hands them over ‘teaching,’ and the one who receives them ‘learning,’ and the one who has them by possessing them in that aviary ‘knowing.’ SOCRATES: Now turn your mind to what comes next. For being a perfect arithmetician, does he not know all numbers? For there are in his soul pieces of knowledge of all numbers. THEAETETUS: Of course. SOCRATES: Would such a person, then, ever count anything, either those numbers themselves in himself or any of the external things that have number? THEAETETUS: How indeed could he not? SOCRATES: And we shall set down counting as nothing else than examining how large a number happens to be. THEAETETUS: Just so. SOCRATES: Therefore, what he knows, he appears to examine as if not knowing it, though we have agreed that he knows every number. For surely you hear of such disputes. THEAETETUS: I do. SOCRATES: Shall we not, then, comparing it to the possession and hunt of doves, say that the hunt was double: one before possessing for the sake of possessing, and the other for the possessor to take and have in his hands what he had possessed long ago? In this way also, of those things of which there were pieces of knowledge in him long ago from learning, and he knew them, it is possible to learn these very things again by taking up and holding the knowledge of each, which he possessed indeed long ago, but did not have ready in his thought. THEAETETUS: True. SOCRATES: This, indeed, is what I was asking just now: how one must speak using names about them, when the arithmetician goes to count or the grammarian to read something, as if knowing indeed in such a situation he comes back again to learn from himself what he knows? THEAETETUS: But that is absurd, Socrates.