2 Plato 2 · 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.
2.1Theaetetus, you say that knowing is having the sentence in your mind be true.
2.2Let me show you something, and afterward you will not say it.
2.3There was a killing in the city. That night only two men were present: the one who struck, and the one who died.
2.4The jurors were not present. They did not see it.
2.5A skilled speaker rose and spoke extremely well and persuaded them.
2.6The man they condemned was in fact the killer.
2.7Ask: did they judge rightly? They judged rightly.
2.8Ask: did they know? They did not know.
2.9They were persuaded. Had the skilled speaker leaned the other way, they would have leaned with him.
2.10Between being right and knowing there stands one thing: being able to give the reason.
2.11A rightness you cannot give the reason for is picked up off the ground. It is in your hand today and gone tomorrow.
2.12Men say the statues Daedalus made would walk off on their own, and had to be tied with a rope.
2.13True sentences in the mind are like that. The rope that ties them down is the reason.
2.14So the question to put to yourself is not "am I right" but "on what do I have it".
2.15What you have on another man’s word is his. What you have because you looked is yours. (cf. The Covenant 1.1)