[43] Plutarch (Fragment. Περὶ ψυχῆς). Εἰ ἀφ’ ἑτέρου ἕτερον ἐννοοῦμεν; οὐκ ἄν, εἰ μὴ προέγνωστο. Τὸ ἐπιχείρημα Πλατωνικόν. Εἰ προστίθεμεν τὸ ἔλλειπον τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς; — καὶ αὐτὸ Πλατωνικόν.
Plutarch, in the same fragment, indicates some of the objections made by Bion and Straton against the doctrine of ἀνάμνησις. How (they asked) does it happen that this reminiscence brings up often what is false or absurd? (asked Bion). If such reminiscence exists (asked Straton) how comes it that we require demonstrations to conduct us to knowledge? and how is it that no man can play on the flute or the harp without practice?
Ὅτι Βίων ἠπόρει περὶ τοῦ ψεύδους, εἰ καὶ αὐτὸ κατ’ ἀνάμνησιν, ὡς τὸ ἐναντίον γε, ἢ οὔ; καὶ τί ἡ ἀλογία; Ὅτι Στράτων ἠπόρει, εἰ ἔστιν ἀναμνησις, πῶς ἄνευ ἀποδείξεων οὐ γιγνόμεθα ἐπιστήμονες; πῶς δὲ οὐδεὶς αὐλητὴς ἢ κιθαριστὴς γέγονεν ἄνευ μελέτης;
[44] Plato, Menon, p. 84. The sixteenth Dissertation of Maximus Tyrius presents a rhetorical amplification of this doctrine — πᾶσα μάθησις, ἀνάμνησις — in which he enters fully into the spirit of the Menon and the Phædon — αὐτοδίδακτόν τι χρῆμα ἡ ψυχή — ἡ ψυχῆς εὕρεσις, αὐτογενής τις οὖσα, καὶ αὐτοφυὴς, καὶ ξύμφυτος, τί ἄλλο ἔστιν ἢ δόξαι ἀληθεῖς ἐγειρόμεναι, ὧν τῇ ἐπεγέρσει τε καὶ ξυντάξει ἐπιστήμη ὄνομα; (c. 6). Compare also Cicero, Tusc. D. i. 24. The doctrine has furnished a theme for very elegant poetry: both in the Consolatio Philosophiæ of Boethius — the piece which ends with
| “Ac si Platonis Musa personat verum, Quod quisque discit, immemor recordatur” — |
and in Wordsworth — “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,” &c.
On the other hand Aristotle alludes also to the same doctrine and criticises it; but he does not seem (so far as I can understand this brief allusion) to seize exactly Plato’s meaning. This is the remark of the Scholiast on Aristotle: and I think it just. It is curious to compare the way in which ἀνάμνησις is handled by Plato in the Menon and Phædon, and by Aristotle in the valuable little tract — Περὶ μνήνης καὶ ἀναμνήσεως (p. 451, b.). Aristotle has his own way of replying to the difficulty raised in the question of Menon, and tries to show that sometimes we know in one sense and do not know in another. See Aristotel. Anal. Prior., ii. p. 67, a. 22; Anal. Poster. i. p. 71, a. 27; and the Scholia on the former passage, p. 193, b. 21, ed. Brandis.
Sir William Hamilton, in one of the Appendixes to his edition of Reid’s Works (Append. D. p. 890 seq.), has given a learned and valuable translation and illustration of the treatise of Aristotle Περὶ Ἀναμνήσεως. I note, however, with some surprise, that while collecting many interesting comments from writers who lived after Aristotle, he has not adverted to what was said upon this same subject by Plato, before Aristotle. It was the more to be expected that he would do this, since he insists so emphatically upon the complete originality of Aristotle.
Plato’s doctrine about à priori reasonings — Different from the modern doctrine.
Plato does not intend here to distinguish (as many modern writers distinguish) geometry from other sciences, as if geometry were known à priori, and other sciences known à posteriori or from experience. He does not suppose that geometrical truths are such that no man can possibly believe the contrary of them; or that they are different in this respect from the truths of any other science. He here maintains that all the sciences lie equally in the untaught mind,[45] but buried, forgotten, and confused: so as to require the skill of the questioner not merely to recall them into consciousness, but to disentangle truth from error. Far from supposing that the untaught mind has a natural tendency to answer correctly geometrical questions, he treats erroneous answers as springing up more naturally than true answers, and as requiring a process of painful exposure before the mind can be put upon the right track. The questioner, without possessing any knowledge himself, (so Plato thinks,) can nevertheless exercise an influence at once stimulating, corrective, and directive. He stimulates the action of the associative process, to call up facts, comparisons, and analogies, bearing on the question: he arrests the respondent on a wrong answer, creating within him a painful sense of ignorance and embarrassment: he directs him by his subsequent questions into the path of right answers. His obstetric aid (to use the simile in Plato’s Theætetus), though presupposing the pregnancy of the respondent mind, is indispensable both to forward the childbirth, and to throw away any offspring which may happen to be deformed. In the Theætetus, the main stress is laid on that part of the dialogue which is performed by the questioner: in the Menon, upon the latent competence and large dead stock of an untaught respondent.