2 Plato 5 · 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.
5.1Theaetetus, we have talked all day.
5.2What we asked was: what is knowing.
5.3You said it is perception. We looked at it, and it would not stand.
5.4You said it is having a true sentence in the mind. We looked at it, and that would not stand either.
5.5You said it is a true sentence together with being able to give the reason. We looked at it, and it still would not stand.
5.6It has grown dark. We have no answer.
5.7You say: then we have wasted the day.
5.8I say: no.
5.9When you left your house this morning you believed you knew what knowing was.
5.10Now you know that you do not.
5.11These two are not the same, and they are very far apart.
5.12A man holding a false answer will not look again. His door is shut.
5.13A man with empty hands has his door open.
5.14I cannot give you an answer. What I can do is take the false one out of your hands.
5.15You will feel that I have taken something and given nothing.
5.16Yes. That is what a midwife does: she does not give you the child. She only stops you carrying a dead one home as a living one.