[313b]
and I made answer that if it was plain to you that this was so, you would have saved me from a long discourse.1 I said, however, that I had never met with any other person who had made this discovery; on the contrary most of the trouble I had was about this very problem. So then, after you had either, as is probable, got the true solution from someone else, or had possibly (by Heaven's favor) hit on it yourself, you fancied you had a firm grip on the proofs of it, and so you omitted to make them fast; thus your view of the truth sways now this way, now that, round about the apparent object; whereas the true object is wholly different.2
1 This phrase echoes Plat. Theaet. 188c.
2 There are echoes here of Plat. Meno 97e ff., Plat. Meno 100a, and Plat. Theaet. 151a ff. Cf. also Plat. L. 7.340b, Plat. L. 7.343c, Plat. L. 7.344b.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 7 translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1966.
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