Part 135

Theæ. What else?

Socr. And what a person sees, does he not sometimes remember?

Theæ. He does remember.

Socr. When he shuts his eyes too? or, when he does this, does he forget?

Theæ. It would be strange to say that, Socrates.

Socr. We must say it though, if we would keep to our former argument, otherwise it is gone.

Theæ. And I suspect so, by Jupiter, though I do not clearly understand it; but tell me how.

55. Socr. Thus. We say that a person who sees has obtained a scientific knowledge of that which he sees; for sight and perception and science are allowed to be the same.

Theæ. Certainly.

Socr. But he who sees, and has obtained a scientific knowledge of that which he sees, if he shuts his eyes, remembers it indeed, but does not see it. Is it not so?

Theæ. Yes.

Socr. But to say that he does not see is as much as to say he does not know, since to see is the same thing as to know.

Theæ. True.

Socr. It follows, therefore, that a person who still remembers a thing of which he had a scientific knowledge, does not know it, because he does not see it; which we have said would be a prodigy, if it happened.

Theæ. You say most truly.

Socr. An impossibility, then, appears to result, if any one should say that science and perception are the same.

Theæ. It seems so.

Socr. Each, then, must be confessed to be different.

Theæ. So it seems.

56. Socr. What then is science? must again, as it appears, be enquired from the beginning. What however shall we do, Theætetus?

Theæ. About what?

Socr. We appear to me, like a dunghill cock, to have jumped from our argument and begun to crow, before we have gained the victory.

Theæ. How so?

Socr. Like disputants we seem to have come to an agreement about the allowed meaning of words, and, having got the better thus far in the discussion, to be content, and though we say we are not wranglers but lovers of wisdom, we do the same as those shrewd men.

Theæ. I do not yet understand what you mean.

Socr. But I will endeavour to explain what I mean on this point. We enquired whether a person who has learnt and remembers any thing, does not know it, and having shewn that a person who has seen a thing and then shut his eyes, remembers it, but does not see it, we proved that he does not know it and remembers it at the same time; but that this is impossible. And so the Protagorean fable is destroyed, and yours at the same time of science and perception, that they are the same.

57. Theæ. It appears so.

Socr. It would not be so, my friend, I think, if the father of the other fable were alive, but he would defend it stoutly: but now, as it is an orphan, we have insulted it. For not even the guardians, whom Protagoras left, are willing to assist it, in the number of whom is Theodorus here. We ourselves, however, for justice sake, will venture to assist it.