Incredulous, I am not, said Simmias; but I want to have this doctrine of recollection brought to my own recollection, and, from what Cebes has said, I am beginning to recollect and be convinced; but I should still like to hear what you were going to say.
This is what I would say, he replied:—We should agree, if I am not mistaken, that what a man recollects he must have known at some previous time.
Very true.
And what is the nature of this knowledge or recollection? I mean to ask, Whether a person who, having seen or heard or in any way perceived anything, knows not only that, but has a conception of something else which is the subject, not of the same but of some other kind of knowledge, may not be fairly said to recollect that of which he has the conception?
What do you mean?
I mean what I may illustrate by the following instance:—The knowledge of a lyre is not the same as the knowledge of a man?
True.
And yet what is the feeling of lovers when they recognize a lyre, or a garment, or anything else which the beloved has been in the habit of using? Do not they, from knowing the lyre, form in the mind's eye an image of the youth to whom the lyre belongs? And this is recollection. In like manner any one who sees Simmias may remember Cebes; and there are endless examples of the same thing.
Endless, indeed, replied Simmias.
And recollection is most commonly a process of recovering that which has been already forgotten through time and inattention.