Now in all three first stages (Plato says) there is great liability to error and confusion. The name is unavoidably equivocal, uncertain, fluctuating: the definition is open to the same reproach, and often gives special and accidental properties along with the universal and essential, or instead of them: the diagram cannot exhibit the essential without some variety of the accidental, nor without some properties even contrary to reality, since any circle which you draw, instead of touching a straight line in one point alone, will be sure to touch it in several points.[27] Accordingly no intelligent man will embody the pure concepts of his mind in fixed representation, either by words or by figures.[28] If we do this, we have the quid or essence, which we are searching for, inextricably perplexed by accompaniments of the quale or accidents, which we are not searching for.[29] We acquire only a confused cognition, exposing us to be puzzled, confuted, and humiliated, by an acute cross-examiner, when he questions us on the four stages which we have gone through to attain it.[30] Such confusion does not arise from any fault in the mind, but from the defects inherent in each of the four stages of progress. It is only by painful effort, when each of these is naturally good — when the mind itself also is naturally good, and when it has gone through all the stages up and down, dwelling upon each — that true knowledge can be acquired.[31] Persons whose minds are naturally bad, or have become corrupt, morally or intellectually, cannot be taught to see even by Lynkeus himself. In a word, if the mind itself be not cognate to the matter studied, no quickness in learning nor force of memory will suffice. He who is a quick learner and retentive, but not cognate or congenial with just or honourable things — he who, though cognate and congenial, is stupid in learning or forgetful — will never effectually learn the truth about virtue or wickedness.[32] These can only be learnt along with truth and falsehood as it concerns entity generally, by long practice and much time.[33] It is only with difficulty, — after continued friction, one against another, of all the four intellectual helps, names and definitions, acts of sight and sense, — after application of the Elenchus by repeated question and answer, in a friendly temper and without spite — it is only after all these preliminaries, that cognition and intelligence shine out with as much intensity as human power admits.[34]
[27] Plat. Epist. vii. 343 B. This illustrates what is said in the Republic about the geometrical ὑποθέσεις (vi. 510 E, 511 A; vii. 533 B.)
[28] Plat. Epist. vii. 343 A. ὧν ἕνεκα νοῦν ἔχων οὐδεὶς τολμήσει ποτὲ εἰς αὐτὸ τιθέναι τὰ νενοημένα, καὶ ταῦτα εἰς ἀμετακίνητον, ὃ δὴ πάσχει τὰ γεγραμμένα τύποις.
[29] Plat. Epist. vii. 343 C.
[30] Plat. Epist. vii. 343 D.
[31] Plat. Epistol. vii. 343 E. ἡ δὲ διὰ πάντων αὐτῶν διαγωγή, ἄνω καὶ κάτω μεταβαίνουσα ἐφ’ ἕκαστον, μόγις ἐπιστήμην ἐνέτεκεν εὖ πεφυκότος εὖ πεφυκότι.
[32] Plato, Epistol. vii. 344 A.
[33] Plato, Epist. vii. 344 B. ἅμα γὰρ αὐτὰ ἀνάγκη μανθάνειν, καὶ τὸ ψεῦδος ἅμα καὶ ἀληθὲς τῆς ὅλης οὐσίας.
[34] Plat. Epist. vii. 344 B. μόγις δὲ τριβόμενα πρὸς ἄλληλα αὐτῶν ἕκαστα, ὀνόματα καὶ λόγοι, ὄψεις τε καὶ αἰσθήσεις, ἐν εὐμενέσιν ἐλέγχος ἐλεγχόμενα καὶ ἄνευ φθόνων ἐρωτήσεσι καὶ ἀποκρίσεσι χρωμένων, ἐξέλαμψε φρόνησις περὶ ἕκαστον καὶ νοῦς, συντείνων ὅτι μάλιστ’ εἰς δύναμιν ἀνθρωπίνην.