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SOC. But we shall affirm that counting is the same thing as considering how great any number in question is.
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THEAET. We shall.
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SOC. Then he who by our previous admission knows all number is found to be considering that which he knows as if he did not know it. You have doubtless heard of such ambiguities.
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THEAET. Yes, I have.
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SOC. Continuing, then, our comparison with the acquisition and hunting of the pigeons, we shall say that the hunting is of two kinds, one before the acquisition for the sake of possessing, the other carried on by the possessor for the sake of taking and holding in his hands what he had acquired long before. And just so when a man long since by learning came to possess knowledge of certain things, and knew them, he may have these very things afresh by taking up again the knowledge of each of them separately and holding it—the knowledge which he had acquired long before, but had not at hand in his mind?
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THEAET. That is true.
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SOC. This, then, was my question just now: How should we express ourselves in speaking about them when an arithmetician undertakes to count or a man of letters to read something? In such a case shall we say that although he knows he sets himself to learn again from himself that which he knows?
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THEAET. But that is extraordinary, Socrates.
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SOC. But shall we say that he is going to read or count that which he does not know, when we have granted that he knows all letters and all numbers?
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THEAET. But that too is absurd.