Note (return) — Chapter XI

All knowledge of truth and reality is, therefore, according to Plato, a REMINISCENCE (ἀνάµνησις)--a recovery of partially forgotten ideas which the soul possessed in another state of existence; and the dialectic of Plato is simply the effort, by apt interrogation, to lead the mind to "recollect" 558 the truth which has been formerly perceived by it, and is even now in the memory though not in consciousness. An illustration of this method is attempted in the "Meno" where Plato introduces Socrates as making an experiment on the mind of an uneducated person. Socrates puts a series of questions to a slave of Meno, and at length elicits from the youth a right enunciation of a geometrical truth. Socrates then points triumphantly to this instance, and bids Meno observe that he had not taught the youth any thing, but simply interrogated him as to his opinions, whilst the youth had recalled the knowledge previously existing in his own mind. 559