Theaetetus

SOC. But would you not rather accept the opposite belief, judging by your own experience when you were learning to read?

THEAET. What experience?

SOC. In learning, you were merely constantly trying to distinguish between the letters both by sight and by hearing, keeping each of them distinct from the rest, that you might not be disturbed by their sequence when they were spoken or written.

THEAET. That is very true.

SOC. And in the music school was not perfect attainment the ability to follow each note and tell which string produced it; and everyone would agree that the notes are the elements of music?

THEAET. Yes, that is all true.

SOC. Then if we are to argue from the elements and combinations in which we ourselves have experience to other things in general, we shall say that the elements as a class admit of a much clearer knowledge than the compounds and of a knowledge that is much more important for the complete attainment of each branch of learning, and if anyone says that the compound is by its nature knowable and the element unknowable, we shall consider that he is, intentionally or unintentionally, joking.

THEAET. Certainly.

SOC. Still other proofs of this might be brought out, I think; but let us not on that account lose sight of the question before us, which is: What is meant by the doctrine that the most perfect knowledge arises from the addition of rational explanation to true opinion?

THEAET. No, we must not.

SOC. Now what are we intended to understand by rational explanation? I think it means one of three things.

THEAET. What are they?

SOC. The first would be making one’s own thought clear through speech by means of verbs and nouns, imaging the opinion in the stream that flows through the lips, as in a mirror or water. Do you not think the rational explanation is something of that sort?

THEAET. Yes, I do. At any rate, we say that he who does that speaks or explains.

SOC. Well, that is a thing that anyone can do sooner or later; he can show what he thinks about anything, unless he is deaf or dumb from the first; and so all who have any right opinion will be found to have it with the addition of rational explanation, and there will henceforth be no possibility of right opinion apart from knowledge.

THEAET. True.