Cebes added : Your favorite doctrine, Socrates, that knowledge is simply recollection, if true, also necessarily implies a previous time in which we learned that which we now recollect. But this would be impossible unless our soul was in some place before existing in the human form ; here, then, is another argument of the soul’s immortality.
But tell me, Cebes, said Simmias, interposing, what proofs are given of this doctrine of recollection ? I am not very sure at this moment that I remember them.
One excellent proof, said Cebes, is afforded by questions. If you put a question to a person in a right way, he will give a true answer of himself ; but how could he do this unless there were knowledge and right reason already in him ? And this is most clearly shown when he is taken to a diagram or to anything of that sort.