Complete Works (51 page)

S
OCRATES
: Then, according to your judgment, it is possible to set down a thing in one’s thought as another thing and not itself?

T
HEAETETUS
: Surely it is.

[e] S
OCRATES
: Now when a man’s thought is accomplishing this, isn’t it essential that he should be thinking of either one or both of these two things?

T
HEAETETUS
: It is essential; either both together, or each in turn.

S
OCRATES
: Very good. Now by ‘thinking’ do you mean the same as I do?

T
HEAETETUS
: What do you mean by it?

S
OCRATES
: A talk which the soul has with itself about the objects under its consideration. Of course, I’m only telling you my idea in all ignorance; but this is the kind of picture I have of it. It seems to me that the soul
[190]
when it thinks is simply carrying on a discussion in which it asks itself questions and answers them itself, affirms and denies. And when it arrives at something definite, either by a gradual process or a sudden leap, when it affirms one thing consistently and without divided counsel, we call this its judgment. So, in my view, to judge is to make a statement, and a judgment is a statement which is not addressed to another person or spoken aloud, but silently addressed to oneself. And what do you think?

T
HEAETETUS
: I agree with that.

S
OCRATES
: So that when a man judges one thing to be another, what he is doing, apparently, is to say to himself that the one thing is the other.

[b] T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, of course.

S
OCRATES
: Now try to think if you have ever said to yourself ‘Surely the beautiful is ugly’,
³³
or ‘The unjust is certainly just’. Or—to put it in the most general terms—have you ever tried to persuade yourself that ‘Surely one thing is another’? Wouldn’t the very opposite of this be the truth? Wouldn’t the truth be that not even in your sleep have you ever gone so far as to say to yourself ‘No doubt the odd is even’, or anything of that kind?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, that’s so.

S
OCRATES
: And do you think that anyone else, in his right mind or out [c] of it, ever ventured seriously to tell himself, with the hope of winning his own assent, that ‘A cow must be a horse’ or ‘Two must be one’?

T
HEAETETUS
: No, indeed I don’t.

S
OCRATES
: Well, then, if to make a statement to oneself is to judge, no one who makes a statement, that is, a judgment, about both things, getting hold of both with his soul, can state, or judge, that one is the other. And you, in your turn, must let this form of words pass.
³⁴
What I mean by it is this: no one judges ‘The ugly is beautiful’ or makes any other such [d] judgment.

T
HEAETETUS
: All right, Socrates, I pass it; and I think you’re right.

S
OCRATES
: Thus a man who has both things before his mind when he judges cannot possibly judge that one is the other.

T
HEAETETUS
: So it seems.

S
OCRATES
: But if he has only one of them before his mind in judging, and the other is not present to him at all, he will never judge that one is the other.

T
HEAETETUS
: That’s true. For he would have to have hold also of the one that is not present to his judgment.

S
OCRATES
: Then ‘other-judging’ is not possible for anyone either when he has both things present to him in judgment or when he has one only. [e] So, if anyone is going to define false judgment as ‘heterodoxy’,
³⁵
he will be saying nothing. The existence of false judgment in us cannot be shown in this way any more than by our previous approaches.

T
HEAETETUS
: It seems not.

S
OCRATES
: And yet, Theaetetus, if it is not shown to exist, we shall be driven into admitting a number of absurdities.

T
HEAETETUS
: And what would they be?

S
OCRATES
: I am not going to tell you until I have tried every possible way of looking at this matter. I should be ashamed to see us forced into
[191]
making the kind of admissions I mean while we are still in difficulties. If we find what we’re after, and become free men, then we will turn round and talk about how these things happen to other people—having secured our own persons against ridicule. While if we can’t find any way of extricating ourselves, then I suppose we shall be laid low, like seasick passengers, and give ourselves into the hands of the argument and let it trample all over us and do what it likes with us. And now let me tell you where I see a way still open to this inquiry.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, do tell me.

S
OCRATES
: I am going to maintain that we were wrong to agree that it [b] is impossible for a man to be in error through judging that things he knows are things he doesn’t know. In a way, it is possible.

T
HEAETETUS
: Now I wonder if you mean the same thing as I too suspected at the time when we suggested it was like that—I mean, that sometimes I, who know Socrates, have seen someone else in the distance whom I don’t know and thought it to be Socrates whom I do know. In a case like that, the sort of thing you are referring to does happen.

S
OCRATES
: But didn’t we recoil from this suggestion because it made us not know, when we do know, things which we know?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, we certainly did.

S
OCRATES
: Then don’t let us put the case in that way; let‘s try another [c] way. It may prove amenable or it may be obstinate; but the fact is we are in such an extremity that we need to turn every argument over and over and test it from all sides. Now see if there is anything in this. Is it possible to learn something you didn’t know before?

T
HEAETETUS
: Surely it is.

S
OCRATES
: And again another and yet another thing?

T
HEAETETUS
: Well, why not?

S
OCRATES
: Now I want you to suppose, for the sake of the argument, that we have in our souls a block of wax, larger in one person, smaller in [d] another, and of purer wax in one case, dirtier in another; in some men rather hard, in others rather soft, while in some it is of the proper consistency.

T
HEAETETUS
: All right, I’m supposing that.

S
OCRATES
: We may look upon it, then, as a gift of Memory, the mother of the Muses. We make impressions upon this of everything we wish to remember among the things we have seen or heard or thought of ourselves; we hold the wax under our perceptions and thoughts and take a stamp from them, in the way in which we take the imprints of signet rings. Whatever is impressed upon the wax we remember and know so long as [e] the image remains in the wax; whatever is obliterated or cannot be impressed, we forget and do not know.

T
HEAETETUS
: Let that be our supposition.

S
OCRATES
: Then take the case of a man who knows these things, but is also considering something he is seeing or hearing; and see if he might judge falsely in this way.

T
HEAETETUS
: In what kind of way?

S
OCRATES
: In thinking, of things which he knows, sometimes that they are things which he knows and sometimes that they are things which he doesn’t know—these cases being what at an earlier stage we wrongly admitted to be impossible.

T
HEAETETUS
: And what do you say now?

S
OCRATES
: We must begin this discussion by making certain distinctions.
[192]
We must make it clear that it is impossible to think (1) that a thing you know, because you possess the record of it in your soul, but which you are not perceiving, is another thing which you know—you have its imprint too—but are not perceiving, (2) that a thing you know is something you do not know and do not have the seal of, (3) that a thing you don’t know is another thing you don’t know, (4) that a thing you don’t know is a thing you know.

Again, it is impossible to think (1) that a thing you are perceiving is another thing that you are perceiving, (2) that a thing you are perceiving is a thing which you are not perceiving, (3) that a thing you are not [b] perceiving is another thing you are not perceiving, (4) that a thing you are not perceiving is a thing you are perceiving.

Yet again, it is impossible to think (1) that a thing you both know and are perceiving, when you are holding its imprint in line with your perception of it, is another thing which you know and are perceiving, and whose imprint you keep in line with the perception (this indeed is even more impossible than the former cases, if that can be), (2) that a thing which you both know and are perceiving, and the record of which you are keeping in its true line, is another thing you know, (3) that a thing you both know and are perceiving and of which you have the record correctly in line as before, is another thing you are perceiving, (4) that a thing you neither know nor [c] are perceiving is another thing you neither know nor perceive, (5) that a thing you neither know nor perceive is another thing you don’t know, (6) that a thing you neither know nor perceive is another thing you are not perceiving.

In all these cases, it is a sheer impossibility that there should be false judgment. It remains that it arises, if anywhere, in the cases I am just going to tell you.

T
HEAETETUS
: What are they? Perhaps I may understand a little better from them; at present, I don’t follow.

S
OCRATES
: In these cases of things you know: when you think (1) that they are other things you know and are perceiving, (2) that they are things you don’t know but are perceiving, (3) that things you both know and are [d] perceiving are other things you both know and are perceiving.

T
HEAETETUS
: Well, now you have left me further behind than ever.

S
OCRATES
: I’ll go over it again in another way. I know Theodorus and remember within myself what he is like; and in the same way I know Theaetetus. But sometimes I am seeing them and sometimes not; sometimes I am touching them, and sometimes not; or I may hear them or perceive them through some other sense, while at other times I have no perception about you two at all, but remember you none the less, and know you within myself—isn’t that so?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, certainly. [e]

S
OCRATES
: Now please take this first point that I want to make clear to you—that we sometimes perceive and sometimes do not perceive the things that we know.

T
HEAETETUS
: That’s true.

S
OCRATES
: Then as regards the things we don’t know, we often don’t perceive them either, but often we only perceive them.

T
HEAETETUS
: That is so, also.

[193]
S
OCRATES
: Now see if you can follow me a little better. Supposing Socrates knows both Theodorus and Theaetetus, but is not seeing either of them, or having any other perception about them: he could never in that case judge within himself that Theaetetus was Theodorus. Is that sense or not?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, that’s quite true.

S
OCRATES
: This, then, was the first of the cases I was speaking of.

T
HEAETETUS
: It was.

S
OCRATES
: Secondly then. Supposing I am acquainted with one of you and not the other, and am perceiving neither of you: in that case, I could never think the one I do know to be the one I don’t know.

T
HEAETETUS
: That is so.

[b] S
OCRATES
: Thirdly, supposing I am not acquainted with either of you, and am not perceiving either of you: I could not possibly think that one of you, whom I don’t know, is another of you whom I don’t know. Now will you please take it that you have heard all over again in succession the other cases described before—the cases in which I shall never judge falsely about you and Theodorus, either when I am familiar or when I am unfamiliar with both of you; or when I know one and not the other. And similarly with perceptions, you follow me.

T
HEAETETUS
: I follow.

S
OCRATES
: So there remains the possibility of false judgment in this case. [c] I know both you and Theodorus; I have your signs upon that block of wax, like the imprints of rings. Then I see you both in the distance, but cannot see you well enough; but I am in a hurry to refer the proper sign to the proper visual perception, and so get this fitted into the trace of itself, that recognition may take place. This I fail to do; I get them out of line, applying the visual perception of the one to the sign of the other. It is like people putting their shoes on the wrong feet, or like what happens when [d] we look at things in mirrors, when left and right change places. It is then that ‘heterodoxy’ or false judgment arises.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, that seems very likely, Socrates; it is an awfully good description of what happens to the judgment.

S
OCRATES
: Then, again, supposing I know both of you, and am also perceiving one of you, and not the other, but am not keeping my knowledge of the former in line with my perception—that’s the expression I used before and you didn’t understand me then.

T
HEAETETUS
: No, I certainly didn’t.

S
OCRATES
: Well, I was saying that if you know one man and perceive [e] him as well, and keep your knowledge of him in line with your perception, you will never take him for some other person whom you know and are perceiving, and the knowledge of whom you are holding straight with the perception. Wasn’t that so?