Dialogues of Plato - MobileReference [987]
SOCRATES: I cannot help praising you, Theaetetus, and yet I must beg you to reconsider your words. Let us grant what you say--then, according to you, he who takes ignorance will have a false opinion--am I right?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: He will certainly not think that he has a false opinion?
THEAETETUS: Of course not.
SOCRATES: He will think that his opinion is true, and he will fancy that he knows the things about which he has been deceived?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then he will think that he has captured knowledge and not ignorance?
THEAETETUS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: And thus, after going a long way round, we are once more face to face with our original difficulty. The hero of dialectic will retort upon us:--'O my excellent friends, he will say, laughing, if a man knows the form of ignorance and the form of knowledge, can he think that one of them which he knows is the other which he knows? or, if he knows neither of them, can he think that the one which he knows not is another which he knows not? or, if he knows one and not the other, can he think the one which he knows to be the one which he does not know? or the one which he does not know to be the one which he knows? or will you tell me that there are other forms of knowledge which distinguish the right and wrong birds, and which the owner keeps in some other aviaries or graven on waxen blocks according to your foolish images, and which he may be said to know while he possesses them, even though he have them not at hand in his mind? And thus, in a perpetual circle, you will be compelled to go round and round, and you will make no progress.' What are we to say in reply, Theaetetus?
THEAETETUS: Indeed, Socrates, I do not know what we are to say.
SOCRATES: Are not his reproaches just, and does not the argument truly show that we are wrong in seeking for false opinion until we know what knowledge is; that must be first ascertained; then, the nature of false opinion?
THEAETETUS: I cannot but agree with you, Socrates, so far as we have yet gone.
SOCRATES: Then, once more, what shall we say that knowledge is?--for we are not going to lose heart as yet.
THEAETETUS: Certainly, I shall not lose heart, if you do not.
SOCRATES: What definition will be most consistent with our former views?
THEAETETUS: I cannot think of any but our old one, Socrates.
SOCRATES: What was it?
THEAETETUS: Knowledge was said by us to be true opinion; and true opinion is surely unerring, and the results which follow from it are all noble and good.
SOCRATES: He who led the way into the river, Theaetetus, said 'The experiment will show;' and perhaps if we go forward in the search, we may stumble upon the thing which we are looking for; but if we stay where we are, nothing will come to light.
THEAETETUS: Very true; let us go forward and try.
SOCRATES: The trail soon comes to an end, for a whole profession is against us.
THEAETETUS: How is that, and what profession do you mean?
SOCRATES: The profession of the great wise ones who are called orators and lawyers; for these persuade men by their art and make them think whatever they like, but they do not teach them. Do you imagine that there are any teachers in the world so clever as to be able to convince others of the truth about acts of robbery or violence, of which they were not eye- witnesses, while a little water is flowing in the clepsydra?
THEAETETUS: Certainly not, they can only persuade them.
SOCRATES: And would you not say that persuading them is making them have an opinion?
THEAETETUS: To be sure.
SOCRATES: When, therefore, judges are justly persuaded about matters which you can know only by seeing them, and