hat which is hard
by the touch, and the softness of that which is soft equally by the
touch?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: But their essence and what they are, and their opposition
to one another, and the essential nature of this opposition, the soul
herself endeavours to decide for us by the review and comparison of
them?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: The simple sensations which reach the soul through the body
are given at birth to men and animals by nature, but their reflections
on the being and use of them are slowly and hardly gained, if they are
ever gained, by education and long experience.

THEAETETUS: Assuredly.

SOCRATES: And can a man attain truth who fails of attaining being?

THEAETETUS: Impossible.

SOCRATES: And can he who misses the truth of anything, have a knowledge
of that thing?

THEAETETUS: He cannot.

SOCRATES: Then knowledge does not consist in impressions of sense, but
in reasoning about them; in that only, and not in the mere impression,
truth and being can be attained?

THEAETETUS: Clearly.

SOCRATES: And would you call the two processes by the same name, when
there is so great a difference between them?

THEAETETUS: That would certainly not be right.

SOCRATES: And what name would you give to seeing, hearing, smelling,
being cold and being hot?

THEAETETUS: I should call all of them perceiving--what other name could
be given to them?

SOCRATES: Perception would be the collective name of them?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Which, as we say, has no part in the attainment of truth any
more than of being?

THEAETETUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: And therefore not in science or knowledge?

THEAETETUS: No.

SOCRATES: Then perception, Theaetetus, can never be the same as
knowledge or science?

THEAETETUS: Clearly not, Socrates; and knowledge has now been most
distinctly proved to be different from perception.

SOCRATES: But the original aim of our discussion was to find out rather
what knowledge is than what it is not; at the same time we have made
some progress, for we no longer seek for knowledge in perception at all,
but in that other process, however called, in which the mind is alone
and engaged with being.

THEAETETUS: You mean, Socrates, if I am not mistaken, what is called
thinking or opining.

SOCRATES: You conceive truly. And now, my friend, please to begin
again at this point; and having wiped out of your memory all that has
preceded, see if you