answer. Without further preface, but at the same time apologizing for his
eagerness, he asks, 'What is knowledge?' Theodorus is too old to answer
questions, and begs him to interrogate Theaetetus, who has the advantage of
youth.

Theaetetus replies, that knowledge is what he learns of Theodorus, i.e.
geometry and arithmetic; and that there are other kinds of knowledge--
shoemaking, carpentering, and the like. But Socrates rejoins, that this
answer contains too much and also too little. For although Theaetetus has
enumerated several kinds of knowledge, he has not explained the common
nature of them; as if he had been asked, 'What is clay?' and instead of
saying 'Clay is moistened earth,' he had answered, 'There is one clay of
image-makers, another of potters, another of oven-makers.' Theaetetus at
once divines that Socrates means him to extend to all kinds of knowledge
the same process of generalization which he has already learned to apply to
arithmetic. For he has discovered a division of numbers into square
numbers, 4, 9, 16, etc., which are composed of equal factors, and represent
figures which have equal sides, and oblong numbers, 3, 5, 6, 7, etc., which
are composed of unequal factors, and represent figures which have unequal
sides. But he has never succeeded in attaining a similar conception of
knowledge, though he has often tried; and, when this and similar questions
were brought to him from Socrates, has been sorely distressed by them.
Socrates explains to him that he is in labour. For men as well as women
have pangs of labour; and both at times require the assistance of midwives.
And he, Socrates, is a midwife, although this is a secret; he has inherited
the art from his mother bold and bluff, and he ushers into light, not
children, but the thoughts of men. Like the midwives, who are 'past
bearing children,' he too can have no offspring--the God will not allow him
to bring anything into the world of his own. He also reminds Theaetetus
that the midwives are or ought to be the only matchmakers (this is the