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Section 110

Socrates. You speak well. Can you tell me, then, the time when you did not think you knew the just and the unjust things? Come now, were you searching a year ago and did you not think you knew? Or did you think you knew? And answer truthfully, so that our conversations may not be in vain.

Alcibiades. But I thought I knew.

Socrates. And in the third year, and the fourth, and the fifth, was it not so?

Alcibiades. Yes, it was.

Socrates. But surely before that you were a child, weren't you?

Alcibiades. Yes.

Socrates. Then I know well that at that time you thought you knew.

Alcibiades. How do you know well?

Socrates. Often I used to hear you at the schoolmasters' when you were a child, and elsewhere, and whenever you were playing knucklebones or any other game, not speaking as if you were in perplexity about just and unjust things, but speaking very loudly and confidently about whichever of the boys you happened to be dealing with, saying that he was wicked and unjust, and that he was acting unjustly; or am I not speaking the truth?

Alcibiades. But what was I supposed to do, Socrates, whenever someone acted unjustly toward me?

Socrates. If you happened to be ignorant of whether you were being treated unjustly or not at that time, you mean, what ought you to do?

Alcibiades. By Zeus, I was not ignorant, but I knew clearly that I was being treated unjustly.

Socrates. You thought you understood, it seems, even when you were a child, the just and unjust things.

Alcibiades. Yes, I did; and I understood them too.

Socrates. In what time did you discover them? For surely it was not in the time when you thought you knew them.

Alcibiades. No, indeed.

Socrates. When, then, did you think you were ignorant? Consider; for you will not find this time.

Alcibiades. By Zeus, Socrates, I cannot say.

Socrates. Then you do not know these things by having discovered them.

Alcibiades. It appears not at all.