THEAETETUS by Plato - Complete text

Part 2 Page 14

Soc. Is it still worth our while to resume the discussion touching opinion?

Theaet. To what are you alluding?

Soc. There is a point which often troubles me, and is a great perplexity to me, both in regard to myself and others. I cannot make out the nature or origin of the mental experience to which I refer.

Theaet. Pray what is it?

Soc. How there can be - false opinion - that difficulty still troubles the eye of my mind; and I am uncertain whether I shall leave the question, or over again in a new way.

Theaet. Begin again, Socrates, - at least if you think that there is the slightest necessity for doing so. Were not you and Theodorus just now remarking very truly, that in discussions of this kind we may take our own time?

Soc. You are quite right, and perhaps there will be no harm in retracing our steps and beginning again. Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.

Theaet. Certainly.

Soc. Well, and what is the difficulty? Do we not speak of false opinion, and say that one man holds a false and another a true opinion, as though there were some natural distinction between them?

Theaet. We certainly say so.

Soc. All things and everything are either known or not known. I leave out of view the intermediate conceptions of learning and forgetting, because they have nothing to do with our present question. Theaet. There can be no doubt, Socrates, if you exclude these, that there is no other alternative but knowing or not knowing a thing. Soc. That point being now determined, must we not say that he who has an opinion, must have an opinion about something which he knows or does not know?

Theaet. He must.

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Plato : THEAETETUS

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