Plato, Alcibiades 1, section 133b

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[133b]

Alcibiades
That is true.

Socrates
Then an eye viewing another eye, and looking at the most perfect part of it, the thing wherewith it sees, will thus see itself.

Alcibiades
Apparently.

Socrates
But if it looks at any other thing in man or at anything in nature but what resembles this,¹ it will not see itself.

Alcibiades
That is true.

Socrates
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.

Alcibiades
That is so.

Socrates
And if the soul too, my dear Alcibiades, is to know herself, she must surely look at a soul, and especially at that region of it in which occurs the virtue of a soul—wisdom, and at any other part of a soul which resembles this?

Alcibiades
I agree, Socrates.

1 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.

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 8 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1955.

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