2 Plato 1 · On Knowing and Not Knowing. Handed down at the Academy, from his Theaetetus and Meno
From the Theaetetus and the Meno. The first asks what knowledge is, asks for a whole book, and ends with no answer — which is rare among his dialogues, and is exactly what the Order values in it. The midwife is from there: he says he brings nothing to birth himself, he only delivers what is in another. The second asks whether virtue can be taught, and holds the geometry drawn in the sand with the boy. For the man, see the Gospel of Plato. This volume separates being right from knowing. In the fourth chapter Plato explains the boy in the sand by a former life; the Order does not take the former life but takes the Covenant 1.2 — where the gaze of reason falls, the many paths become one, and the real comes to be. His explanation stands and is not struck out.
1.1My mother was a midwife. I am in the same trade.
1.2She delivered bodies. I deliver what is in people’s minds.
1.3A midwife does not bear. Only a woman past childbearing takes up the work — she knows the thing, and no longer does it.
1.4It is the same with me. I have nothing in me to teach you. That is not modesty. It is the fact.
1.5Some come to me to take something away. They go home empty-handed, because I have nothing to give.
1.6Others come already carrying something, and do not know it.
1.7Those go home with a living thing in their hands.
1.8I did not give it to them. They bore it themselves. I only kept them from holding it in.
1.9There is one more thing a midwife must do, and it is the least loved part of the work.
1.10Some children are born dead. Some are nothing but wind.
1.11I have to say so. And when I say so, people hate me.
1.12Theaetetus, understand this: a midwife who fears being hated will call the stillborn living.
1.13From that moment she is not a midwife. She is a flatterer.
1.14I would rather be hated. My mother was the same.