Phaedo. Then we
must have had knowledge of equality
before the time when we first saw equal things and
thought, ‘All these things are aiming to be like equality but fall
short.’
That is
true.
And we agree, also, that
we have not gained knowledge of it, and that it is impossible to gain this
knowledge, except by sight or touch or some other of the senses? I consider that
all the senses are alike.
Yes,
Socrates, they are all alike, for the purposes of our argument.
Then it is through the senses that we must learn
that all sensible objects strive after
absolute equality and fall short of it. Is that our view?
Yes.
Then before we began to see or hear or use the other senses we must
somewhere have gained a knowledge of abstract or absolute equality, if we were
to compare with it the equals which we perceive by the senses, and see that all
such things yearn to be like abstract equality but fall short of
it.
That follows necessarily
from what we have said before, Socrates.
And we saw and heard and had the other senses as soon as we were
born?
Certainly.
But, we say,
we must have acquired a knowledge of equality before we had these
senses?
Yes.
Then it appears that we must have acquired it before we
were born.
It does.
Now if we had acquired that knowledge before we
were born, and were born with it, we knew before we were born and at the moment
of birth not only the equal and the greater and the less, but all such
abstractions? For our present argument is no more concerned with the equal than
with absolute beauty and the absolute good and the just and the holy, and, in
short,
with all those things which we stamp
with the seal of absolute in our dialectic process of questions and answers; so
that we must necessarily have acquired knowledge of all these before our
birth.
That is
true.
And if after acquiring it
we have not, in each case, forgotten it, we must always be born knowing these
things, and must know them throughout our life; for to know is to have acquired
knowledge and to have retained it without losing it, and the loss of knowledge
is just what we mean when we speak of forgetting, is it not,
Simmias?
Certainly,
Socrates,
said he.But, I suppose, if we acquired knowledge before we were
born and lost it at birth, but afterwards by the use of our senses regained the
knowledge which we had previously possessed, would not the process which we call
learning really be recovering knowledge which is our own? And should we be right
in calling this recollection?
Assuredly.