Alcibiades. What you say is true.
Socrates. The eye beholding an eye and looking in the most excellent part of it in that which it sees, may thus see itself?
Alcibiades. Apparently so.
Socrates. But if the eye look at any other part of the man, or at anything whatever, except what this part of the eye happens to be like, it will not see itself.
Alcibiades. It is true.
Socrates. If therefore the eye would see itself, it must look in an eye, and in that place of the eye, too, where the virtue of the eye is naturally seated; and the virtue of the eye is sight.
Alcibiades. I am aware that it is so.
Socrates. Whether then is it not true, my friend Alcibiades, that the soul if she know herself, must look at soul, and especially at that place in the soul in which wisdom, the virtue of the soul, is ingenerated, and also at whatsoever else this virtue of the soul resembles?
Alcibiades. To me, Socrates, it seems true.
Socrates. Do we know of any place in the soul more divine than that which is the seat of knowledge and intelligence?