Note 44 — Chapter XXII · MENON.
Reading edition
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.