t be reduced
to rule, and of which the grounds cannot always be given in words. A
person may have some skill or latent experience which he is able to use
himself and is yet unable to teach others, because he has no principles,
and is incapable of collecting or arranging his ideas. He has practice,
but not theory; art, but not science. This is a true fact of psychology,
which is recognized by Plato in this passage. But he is far from
saying, as some have imagined, that inspiration or divine grace is to be
regarded as higher than knowledge. He would not have preferred the poet
or man of action to the philosopher, or the virtue of custom to the
virtue based upon ideas.

Also here, as in the Ion and Phaedrus, Plato appears to acknowledge an
unreasoning element in the higher nature of man. The philosopher only
has knowledge, and yet the statesman and the poet are inspired. There
may be a sort of irony in regarding in this way the gifts of genius. But
there is no reason to suppose that he is deriding them, any more than he
is deriding the phenomena of love or of enthusiasm in the Symposium, or
of oracles in the Apology, or of divine intimations when he is speaking
of the daemonium of Socrates. He recognizes the lower form of right
opinion, as well as the higher one of science, in the spirit of one who
desires to include in his philosophy every aspect of human life; just
as he recognizes the existence of popular opinion as a fact, and the
Sophists as the expression of it.

This Dialogue contains the first intimation of the doctrine of
reminiscence and of the immortality of the soul. The proof is very
slight, even slighter than in the Phaedo and Republic. Because men had
abstract ideas in a previous state, they must have always had them, and
their souls therefore must have always existed. For they must always
have been either men or not men. The fallacy of the latter words is
transparent. And Socrates himself appears to be conscious of their
weakness; for he adds immediately afterwards, 'I have said some things
of which I am not altogether confident.' (Compare Phaedo.) It may be
observed, however, that the fanciful notion of pre-existence is combined
with a true but partial view of the origin and unity of knowledge,
and of the association of ideas. Knowledge is prior to any particular
knowledge, and exists not in the previous state of the individual, but
of the race. It is potential, not actual, and can only be appropriated
b