2 Plato 1 · On Knowing and Not Knowing. Handed down at the Academy, from his Theaetetus and Meno
This book divides being right from knowing. In chapter 4 Plato explains the boy in the sand by a former life. This scripture does not take the former life. It takes Covenant 1.2 — where the gaze of reason falls, the many roads become one, and only then is the real born. His explanation is kept and 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.