POLITICUS (Statesman) by Plato - Complete text

Page 29

Str. I will proceed, finding, as I do, such a ready listener in you: when children are beginning to know their letters -

Y. Soc. What are you going to say?

Str. That they distinguish the several letters well enough in very short and easy syllables, and are able to tell them correctly.

Y. Soc. Certainly.

Str. Whereas in other syllables they do not recognize them, and think and speak falsely of them.

Y. Soc. Very true.

Str. Will not the best and easiest way of bringing them to a knowledge of what they do not as yet know be -

Y. Soc. Be what?

Str. To refer them first of all to cases in which they judge correctly about the letters in question, and then to compare these with the cases in which they do not as yet know, and to show them that the letters are the same, and have the same character in both combination, until all cases in which they are right have been Placed side by side with all cases in which they are wrong. In this way they have examples, and are made to learn that each letter in every combination is always the same and not another, and is always called by the same name.

Y. Soc. Certainly.

Str. Are not examples formed in this manner? We take a thing and compare it with another distinct instance of the same thing, of which we have a right conception, and out of the comparison there arises one true notion, which includes both of them.

Y. Soc. Exactly.

Str. Can we wonder, then, that the soul has the same uncertainty about the alphabet of things, and sometimes and in some cases is firmly fixed by the truth in each particular, and then, again, in other cases is altogether at sea; having somehow or other a correction of combinations; but when the elements are transferred into the long and difficult language (syllables) of facts, is again ignorant of them?

Y. Soc. There is nothing wonderful in that.

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Plato : POLITICUS

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