self, and see justice done?

THEODORUS: Not I, Socrates, but rather Callias, the son of Hipponicus,
is guardian of his orphans. I was too soon diverted from the
abstractions of dialectic to geometry. Nevertheless, I shall be grateful
to you if you assist him.

SOCRATES: Very good, Theodorus; you shall see how I will come to the
rescue. If a person does not attend to the meaning of terms as they are
commonly used in argument, he may be involved even in greater paradoxes
than these. Shall I explain this matter to you or to Theaetetus?

THEODORUS: To both of us, and let the younger answer; he will incur less
disgrace if he is discomfited.

SOCRATES: Then now let me ask the awful question, which is this:--Can a
man know and also not know that which he knows?

THEODORUS: How shall we answer, Theaetetus?

THEAETETUS: He cannot, I should say.

SOCRATES: He can, if you maintain that seeing is knowing. When you are
imprisoned in a well, as the saying is, and the self-assured adversary
closes one of your eyes with his hand, and asks whether you can see
his cloak with the eye which he has closed, how will you answer the
inevitable man?

THEAETETUS: I should answer, 'Not with that eye but with the other.'

SOCRATES: Then you see and do not see the same thing at the same time.

THEAETETUS: Yes, in a certain sense.

SOCRATES: None of that, he will reply; I do not ask or bid you answer
in what sense you know, but only whether you know that which you do not
know. You have been proved to see that which you do not see; and you
have already admitted that seeing is knowing, and that not-seeing is
not-knowing: I leave you to draw the inference.

THEAETETUS: Yes; the inference is the contradictory of my assertion.

SOCRATES: Yes, my marvel, and there might have been yet worse things in
store for you, if an opponent had gone on to ask whether you can have a
sharp and also a dull knowledge, and whether you can know near, but not
at a distance, or know the same thing with more or less intensity,
and so on without end. Such questions might have been put to you by a
light-armed mercenary, who argued for pay. He would have lain in wait
for you, and when you took up the position, that sense is knowledge,
he would have made an assault upon hearing, smelling, and the other
senses;--he would have shown you no mercy; and while you were lost in
envy and admiration of his wisdom, he would have got you into his
net, out of which you would n