SOCRATIC DIALOGUES 135

Taylor A.E., Plato. The man and his work, New York: Meridian Books, Inc. 1960.

Meno is half inclined to lay the blame for the collapse of the argument on Socrates, who, he says, has the reputation of always being bepuzzled himself and communicating his bewilderment to others. He benumbs men's wits as the fish called n£rkh benumbs their muscles if they touch it. In any other company Meno would have plenty to say about "goodness," but in the presence of Socrates he is "paralysed." In any foreign city Socrates would run a real risk of being arrested for sorcery. Socrates has to admit the accusation, with the reservation that the comparison with the n£rkh is only apt on the assumption that the creature itself is as "numb" as its victims. The difficulties his conversation creates in others are only the reflection of those he finds in his own thinking. But if Meno will adventure on the definition of "goodness" over again, he will do his best to examine the new result (80 a-d). At this point Meno again tries to run off on an irrelevant issue. He brings up the "sophistic " puzzle which we have already met in136 PLATO: THE MAN AND HIS WORK

the Euthydemus, that "inquiry" is impossible because you cannot inquire after something you already know, nor yet after what you do not know (since, in the second case, you would not even recognize the object you were looking for, if you should succeed in finding it) This dilemma, however, would cease to be a difficulty if there should be truth in a doctrine which Socrates has learned from "priests and priestesses who have been at the pains to understand their professional duties " and also from Pindar and other poets. The doctrine is that our soul is immortal and our present life only one episode in its history. If this is so the soul must long ago have "learned" everything, and only needs to be "put in mind" of something it has temporarily forgotten in order to regain its knowledge by diligent following of the clue provided by "reminiscence." Learning, in fact, is just a process of "re-call" (¢n£mnhsij), and for this reason the sophistic argument to show that it is impossible to learn a new truth is a mere appeal to mental indolence (80e-82e). (As we are encountering the doctrine of "recollection " for the first time, it is worth while to note what the exact point of it is. It must be observed that it is not a theory of "innate ideas," or "innate knowledge," in the popular sense of the words. We are not supposed to bring any actual knowledge into the world ready-made with us. On the contrary, we are said to "have learned" truth but to have lost it again, and we have to recover what we have lost. The recovery requires a real and] prolonged effort of steady thinking; what "recollection," or more accurately "being reminded," does for us is to provide the starting-point for this effort. In the Phaedo, this is illustrated by the way in which chance " associations " will start a train of thinking, as when the sight of an absent friend's belongings or his portrait] sets us thinking of the friend himself. The main emphasis thus falls not on the Orphic doctrine of pre-existence and re-incarnation, which Socrates professes to have learned from poets and priests, but on the function of sense-experience as suggestive of and pregnant with truths of an intelligible order which it does not itself adequately embody or establish. And the philosophical importance of the doctrine is not that it proves the immortality of the soul, but that it shows that the acquisition of knowledge is not a matter of passively receiving "instruction," but one of following up a personal effort of thinking once started by an arresting sense-experience. But for this "suggestiveness" of sense-experience the ignava ratio of the eristic, "you cannot learn the truth from any teacher, because when he utters it" you will not recognize it for the truth when he utters it," would be valid. We see, then, why both Socrates and Plato hold that "knowledge" can only be won bySOCRATIC DIALOGUES 137

personal participation in " research " ; it cannot simply be handed on from one man to another.¹

An illustration of the principle that "learning" is really "being reminded of something," i.e. is the following up by personal effort of the suggestions of sense-experience, may now be given. Socrates calls forward the lad who is attending on Meno, after satisfying himself that the boy can understand a question in plain Greek, but has never been taught any mathematics, and undertakes to show how he can be brought to see geometrical truths for himself by merely asking appropriate questions which enable the answerer to correct his own first hasty thoughts. The point to be established is that the areas of squares are proportional to the second powers of the lengths of their sides, and in particular that the area of a square described on the diagonal of one previously described is double the area of the original figure.² We are to think of Socrates, of course, as drawing the requisite figure, which will be found in any commentary on the Meno, in the sand as he speaks. The boy's first thought is that if we want to make a square with twice the area of a given one, we must make its sides twice as long. (That is, he argues, "since 2² =2x2, 4² =2x4.) He is easily made to see for himself that this cannot be true (since 4x4=16), and amends his first answer by suggesting that the side of the second square should be to that of the first as 3 to 2 (i.e. he suggests that 3²=8). Again it is easy to get him to see that this is impossible (since 3x3=9). The length of the line we require must be greater than that of our original line, but less than half as great again (
). And with a few more questions, the lad is led to see that the line we require as the base of our second square is no other than the diagonal of our original figure (82b-85b).³ The point insisted on is that the lad starts with a false proposition, is led to replace it by one less erroneous, and finally by one which, so far as it goes, is true. Yet Socrates has "told" him nothing. He has merely drawn diagrams which suggest the right answers to a series of questions. The only "information" he has imparted to the slave is that a certain line is technically called by "the sophists," i.e. “professionals,” a "diagonal." Everything else has been left to the boy to think out for himself in response to the suggestions provided by Socrates' diagrams and questions. Yet undeniably

¹ See the language on this point of Plato, Ep. vii. 341c. Perhaps I may refer to the statement of the theory in my little volume, Platonism and its Influence (Boston, U.S.A., 1925) c. 2, as well as to Burnet, Greek Philosophy, Part 1., pp. 220-222.

² The particular theorem is chosen, no doubt, because of the importance of the "side and diagonal" as the most elementary instance of a pair of "incommensurable" magnitudes.

³ Thus, to put it arithmetically, what has been proved is that
lies somewhere between 1 and 1.5. In the famous passage Rep. 546b ff. it is made clear that Socrates, in fact, knows quite well how to construct the whole series of fractions which form the "successive convergents" to
. For his purpose here it is enough to consider the "second convergent," 3/2, and to snow that this is too large a value

138 PLATO: THE MAN AND HIS WORK

the lad began by not knowing something and ended by knowing it. Thus he “brought up the knowledge from within" ¢nalabën aÙtÕj ™x aØtoà t¾n ™pist»mhn), and such a process is "being reminded," "recalling " something. We infer then that the slave once "had" the knowledge he had forgotten, and since he has never in this life been "taught" geometry, the "once" must have been "before he was a man," and thus we see that the soul is immortal. (Socrates, however, hastens to remark that he would not care to be too confident about anything in the theory except the main point that it proves that we can arrive at truth and thus saves us from the sloth and self-neglect which are natural consequences of the eristic ignava ratio (86b).)

In the Phaedo itself the argument is found insufficient to meet the formidable difficulty raised by Cebes that even if pre-existence is true, it gives us no guarantee that we shall continue to be after the dissolution of our present body. For the illustrations from "association," see Phaedo, 73c ff.

The same way of speaking about our ante-natal condition as the "time when we were not yet men" is characteristic of the Phaedo. It implies that the true self is not, as is commonly thought, the embodied soul, but the soul simpliciter, the body being the instrument (Ôrganon) which the soul "uses," and the consequent definition of "man" as a "soul using a body as its instrument." since that which "uses" an implement is always superior to the implement it uses, this definition merely embodies the Socratic conviction that the soul is the thing of supreme value in us.

The caution should not be understood to mean that Socrates doubts the fact of immortality. His firm belief in that is the assumption of the Phaedo and is really presupposed by Apolog. 40c-41c. He means, as he says, that he will not go bail for the lÒgoj ; it is not really a complete demonstration of pre-existence and immortality, as is frankly admitted in the Phaedo, though, no doubt, it suggests their possibility. The real reason why Socrates attaches so much importance to the doctrine of “reminiscence” (¢n£mnhsij) is independent of the use of it as an argument for “survival.” One should be careful bear un mind that ¢n£mnhsij does not properly mean in the theory “remembering” but “being reminded of” something. Sensible experiences are always “suggesting” to us “ideal” standards which none of them actually exhibit.

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