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Section 74

"Does it not follow from all this that recollection is sometimes caused by similar things, and sometimes by dissimilar things?" "It does." "But whenever one recollects something from similar things, must he not necessarily experience something further: must he not consider whether the similarity falls short in any way of the thing recollected, or not?" "Necessarily," he said. "Consider then," he said, "if this is so. We say there is something equal. I do not mean a stick equal to a stick, or a stone to a stone, or anything like that, but something else entirely beyond all these: the Equal itself. Shall we say it exists or not?" "We shall most certainly say it exists, by Zeus," said Simmias. "Do we know what it is?" "Certainly," he said. "From where did we get the knowledge of it? Was it not from the things we just mentioned: by seeing sticks or stones or other things that are equal, we thought of that Equal itself, which is different from them? Or does it not seem different to you? Look at it this way: do not equal stones and sticks, though they remain the same, sometimes appear equal to one person, but not to another?" "Certainly." "But what about Equals themselves? Have they ever appeared unequal to you? Has Equality ever appeared to be Inequality?" "Never, Socrates." "Then these equal things and the Equal itself are not the same." "Not at all, Socrates, it seems to me." "Yet it is from these equal things, which are different from that Equal, that you grasped and acquired the knowledge of it?" "You speak the exact truth," he said. "And it is either similar to them, or dissimilar?" "Certainly." "It makes no difference," he said. "As long as, upon seeing one thing, you think of another from that sight—whether similar or dissimilar—it is necessary that this was recollection." "Absolutely." "Now," he said, "what about our experience with equal pieces of wood and the equal things we mentioned just now? Do they appear to us to be equal in the same way the Equal itself is? Do they fall short of being like the Equal itself, or not?" "They fall very much short," he said. "Do we agree, then, that whenever someone seeing a thing considers, 'This thing I am looking at wishes to be like some other reality, but it falls short and cannot be like it, but is inferior'—must not the one considering this necessarily have previous knowledge of the thing he says it resembles but falls short of?" "Necessarily." "And is this what has happened to us concerning equal things and the Equal itself?" "Absolutely." "Therefore, we must necessarily have known the Equal itself before that time when we first saw equal things and considered that they all desired to be like the Equal, but fell short." "It is so."