By all means, he replied.
Very true, he said.
Does not what you have been saying, if true, amount to Then the wise or temperate man, and he only, will know this: that there must be a single science which is wholly a himself, and be able to examine what he knows or does not science of itself and of other sciences, and that the same is know, and to see what others know and think that they also the science of the absence of science?
know and do really know; and what they do not know, and Yes.
fancy that they know, when they do not. No other person But consider how monstrous this proposition is, my will be able to do this. And this is wisdom and temperance friend: in any parallel case, the impossibility will be trans-and self-knowledge—for a man to know what he knows, parent to you.
and what he does not know. That is your meaning?
How is that? and in what cases do you mean?
Yes, he said.
In such cases as this: Suppose that there is a kind of vi-Now then, I said, making an offering of the third or last sion which is not like ordinary vision, but a vision of itself argument to Zeus the Saviour, let us begin again, and ask, and of other sorts of vision, and of the defect of them, in the first place, whether it is or is not possible for a per-which in seeing sees no colour, but only itself and other 19
“Charmides” – Plato
sorts of vision: Do you think that there is such a kind of fears, but has no object of fear?
vision?
I never did, he said.