132
Soc. I will tell you what I suspect to be the real advice which the inscription gives us. I rather think there are not many illustrations of it to be found, but only in the case of sight.
132
Alc. What do you mean by that?
132
Soc. Consider in your turn: suppose that, instead of speaking to a man, it said to the eye of one of us, as a piece of advice See thyself, how should we apprehend the meaning of the admonition? Would it not be, that the eye should look at that by looking at which it would see itself?
132
Alc. Clearly.
132
Soc. Then let us think what object there is anywhere, by looking at which we can see both it and ourselves.
132
Alc. Why, clearly, Socrates, mirrors and things of that sort.
132
Soc. Quite right. And there is also something of that sort in the eye that we see with?
132
Alc. To be sure.
133
Soc. And have you observed that the face of the person who looks into another’s eye is shown in the optic confronting him, as in a mirror, and we call this the pupil, The Greek κόρη and the Latin pupilla both mean little girl or doll, and were used to indicate the dark center of the eye in which a tiny image can be seen reflected. for in a sort it is an image of the person looking?
133
Alc. That is true.
133
Soc. Then an eye viewing another eye, and looking at the most perfect part of it, the thing wherewith it sees, will thus see itself.
133
Alc. Apparently.
133
Soc. But if it looks at any other thing in man or at anything in nature but what resembles this, i.e. it must look at the pupil of a man’s eye, or at what is comparable to that perfect part in other things. it will not see itself.
133
Alc. That is true.
133
Soc. Then if an eye is to see itself, it must look at an eye, and at that region of the eye in which the virtue of an eye is found to occur; and this, I presume, is sight.
133
Alc. That is so.
