Page - 827 - in The Complete Plato

STRANGER: The higher ideas, my dear friend, can hardly be set forth except through the medium of examples; every man seems to know all things in a dreamy sort of way, and then again to wake up and to know nothing. YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean? STRANGER: I fear that I have been unfortunate in raising a question about our experience of knowledge. YOUNG SOCRATES: Why so? STRANGER: Why, because my ‘example’ requires the assistance of another example. YOUNG SOCRATES: Proceed; you need not fear that I shall tire. STRANGER: I will proceed, finding, as I do, such a ready listener in you: when children are beginning to know their letters— YOUNG SOCRATES: What are you going to say? STRANGER: That they distinguish the several letters well enough in very short and easy syllables, and are able to tell them correctly. YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. STRANGER: Whereas in other syllables they do not recognize them, and think and speak falsely of them. YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true. STRANGER: Will not the best and easiest way of bringing them to a knowledge of what they do not as yet know be— YOUNG SOCRATES: Be what? STRANGER: To refer them first of all to cases in which they judge correctly about the letters in question, and then to compare these with the cases in which they do not as yet know, and to show them that the letters are the same, and have the same character in both combinations, until all cases in which they are right have been placed side by side with all cases in which they are wrong. In this way they have examples, and are made to learn that each letter in every combination is always the same and not another, and is always called by the same name. YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly. STRANGER: Are not examples formed in this manner? We take a thing and compare it with another distinct instance of the same thing, of which we have a right conception, and out of the comparison there arises one true notion, which includes both of them. 827