into his own mind to
find it. This is what we mean by saying that the child sees it for
himself.

In the "Meno" Plato attempts to give an experimental proof of the
doctrine of recollection. Socrates is represented as talking to a
slave-boy, who admittedly has no education in mathematics, and barely
knows what a square is. By dint of skilful questioning Socrates
elicits from the boy's mind a theorem about the properties of the
square. The point of the argument is that Socrates tells him nothing
at all. He imparts no information. He only asks questions. The boy's
knowledge of the theorem, therefore, is not due to the teaching of
Socrates, nor is it due to experience. It can only be recollection.
But if knowledge is recollection, it may be asked, why is it that we
do not remember at once? Why is the tedious process of education in
mathematics necessary? Because the soul, descending from the world of
Ideas into the body, has its knowledge dulled and almost blotted out
by its immersion in the sensuous. It has forgotten, or it has only the
dimmest and faintest recollection. It has to be reminded, and it takes
a great effort to bring the half-lost ideas back to the mind. This
process of being reminded is education.

With this, of course, is connected the doctrine of {217}
transmigration, which Plato took, no doubt, from the Pythagoreans.
Most of the details of Plato's doctrine of transmigration are mere
myth. Plato does not mean them seriously, as is shown by the fact that
he gives quite different and inconsistent accounts of these details in
different dialogues. What, in all probability, he did believe,
however, may be summarized as follows. The soul is pre-existent as
well as immortal. Its natural home is the world of Ideas, where at
first it existed, without a body, in the pure and blissful
contemplation of Ideas. But because it has affinities with the world
of sense, it sinks down into a body. After death, if a man has lived a
good life, and especially if he has cultivated the knowledge of Ideas,
philosophy, the soul returns to its blissful abode in the world of
Ideas, till, after a long period it again returns to earth in a body.
Those who do evil suffer after death severe penalties, and are then
reincarnated in the body of some being lower than themselves. A man
may become a woman. Men may even, if their lives have been utterly
sensual, pass into the bodies of animals.

5. Ethics

_(a) The Ethics of the Individ