70 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [PAGES 



that Bacon uses the word virtue in the general sense of excellence, 

 and is, therefore, obliged to qualify it by an adjective showing 

 what kind of excellence he means. Virtue with us means moral 

 excellence. It is therefore unnecessary for us to talk of ' moral 

 virtue' as Bacon does. See, e.g., p. 61, 1. 12. 



Page 2, 1. 5. I have often thought, The king learns so readily 

 that, instead of learning something new, he seems to be merely 

 recalling something which he had forgotten. The Platonic doc 

 trine referred to is that our souls have possessed knowledge in a 

 previous state of existence : and that therefore the knowledge 

 which we acquire in this life is not put into us from without. It 

 is latent in the soul, and is recovered by an act of recollection. 

 In the dialogue called the Meno Socrates says "that he had 

 heard from priests and priestesses and inspired men that the 

 soul of man is immortal, and at one time has an end, which is 

 termed dying, and at another time is born again, but is never 



destroyed The soul, then, as being immortal, and 



having been born again many times, and having seen all things 

 that there are, whether in this world or the world below, has 

 knowledge of them all ; and it is no wonder that she should be 

 able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, 

 and about everything ; for as all nature is akin, and the soul has 

 learned all things, there is no difficulty in her eliciting, or as men 

 say learning, all out of a single recollection, if a man is strenuous 

 and does not faint ; for all enquiry and all learning is but recollec 

 tion." Having thus stated the doctrine, he further proves the 

 existence of this latent knowledge by the interrogation of one of 

 Meno's slaves, who, in the skilful hands of Socrates, is made to 

 acknowledge some elementary relations of geometrical figures. 

 But whence had the uneducated man this knowledge ? He had 

 never learnt geometry in this world ; nor was it born with him ; 

 he must therefore have had it when he was not a man. And as 

 he always was or was not a man, he must have always had it. 

 Jowett's Plato, vol. 1, p. 261 and p. 281. The same doctrine is 

 repeated and illustrated by Plato in the Phcedo. Cf . the passage 

 in Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality, beginning 

 " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 



The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 

 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 



And cometh from afar. " 



The form in which the doctrine is expressed is fanciful, but it 

 contains an important psychological truth. The mind of each in 

 dividual is not a mere passive receptivity, but a complex of 

 tendencies and aptitudes. The mind takes an active part in the 

 by which knowledge is acquired. 



11. tabernacle, a diminutive of the Latin taberna (Eng. 

 rn), lit. 'a shed made of planks.' It signifies a temporary 



