199–200
Socrates
SOC. If the interchange of kinds of knowledge should ever turn out to be false opinion.
Theaetetus
THEAET. How so?
10
Socrates
SOC. Is it not the height of absurdity, in the first place for one who has knowledge of something to be ignorant of this very thing, not through ignorance but through his knowledge; secondly, for him to be of opinion that this thing is something else and something else is this thing—for the soul, when knowledge has come to it, to know nothing and be ignorant of all things? For by this argument there is nothing to prevent ignorance from coming to us and making us know something and blindness from making us see, if knowledge is ever to make us ignorant.
Theaetetus
THEAET. Perhaps, Socrates, we were not right in making the birds represent kinds of knowledge only, but we ought to have imagined kinds of ignorance also flying about in the soul with the others; then the hunter would catch sometimes knowledge and sometimes ignorance of the same thing, and through the ignorance he would have false, but through the knowledge true opinion.
Socrates
SOC. It is not easy, Theaetetus, to refrain from praising you. However, examine your suggestion once more. Let it be as you say: the man who catches the ignorance will, you say, have false opinion. Is that it?
Socrates
SOC. But surely he will not also think that he has false opinion.
Theaetetus
THEAET. Certainly not.
Socrates
SOC. No, but true opinion, and will have the attitude of knowing that about which he is deceived.
5
Theaetetus
THEAET. Of course.
