Collecting the Letters

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Collecting the Letters

Author(s): Stephen MennSource: Phronesis, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Nov., 1998), pp. 291-305Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4182596 .

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Collecting the LettersSTEPHENMENN

ABSTRACTIn this paper I reexamine Plato's method of collection and division, and spe-cifically of collection. If collection and division are simply methods for map-ping out genus-species trees, then it is hard to understandwhy Plato is so excitedabout them. But a close study of Plato's examples shows that these methods aresomething broader, and shows why Plato would regard collection as an impor-tant tool for coming to know "elements"in any domainof inquiry.In the first sec-tion I focus on a notoriouslyproblematicexampleof collection fromthe Philebus,Theuth's discovery of the letters of the alphabet;I show how Plato interpretsthisdiscoveryas a process of collection, and draw conclusions about what Plato takescollection to be. In the process, I try to bring out Plato's analysis of what is in-volved in learning to read and write a language, which he takes as paradigmaticfor otherknowledge. In the second section, stepping back from the Philebus pas-sage and applying its lessons, I describe the function of collection and division,for the late Plato, in coming to know "elements," including the Forms, or themost basic Forms. Reflection on Plato's use of collection suggests a (relativelynon-mystical) account of what it is to know non-complex intelligible entities, andof how we can come to know them. I also use Plato's descriptions of collectionand division to suggest a Platonic context for the notion of the separation of theForms, to which the late Plato remains firmly committed.

IAt Philebus 16b5-18d2 Socrates describes the way or method (ob06)through which all the discoveries of the arts have been made. At 18b6-d2,in particular,he illustrates this method in the work of Theuth, the legend-ary Egyptian inventor of writing and the alphabet. But it has been noto-riously difficult to explain how the story of Theuth illustrates what it issupposed to illustrate.

The problem is that Socrates' method is twofold: he describes first apath "from the one to the many," and then a reverse path "from the manyto the one." It is customary to call these respectively the methods of divi-sion (8taipeai;) and collection (auvayoy), names Plato uses together in aparallelpassage of the Phaedrus.' The story of Theuth is introducedexpressly

Accepted March 1998' The termsavuvayoyfand &tcipeot;are used together at Phaedrus 266b4. For argu-? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 1998 Phronesis XLII114


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292 STEPHEN MENNto illustrate the method of collection, the "contrary"of what was discussedbefore (18a9-b4), but commentators have generally been puzzled aboutwhy it should illustrate collection rather than division. Indeed, they havebeen puzzled about collection as such; and it has been suggested that Platois really describing only a single method, the method of division.

Collection is supposed to take place when "someone is compelled tograsp the infinite [a`nEtpov]first":to collect well, he "must not look imme-diately to the one, but must recognize that each multiplicity is delimitedby some number, and from all these finally reach a one" (18bl-4); justas, conversely, if we begin by dividing some one, we should make finitedivisions and subdivisions to establish precisely how many it is, beforeadmitting that it is also infinitely many. The account of collection is, asstated, obscure, but the story of Theuth is supposed to clarify it. Theuthbegins by recognizing that pwvi (I will provisionally translate this as"vocal sound") is infinite (as it was already said to be in the discussionof division, 17b3-4). He does not then immediately proceed to recognizesome one thing present in all vocal sound, but rather"he recognized thatthe vowels [(pxviFjvta]in this infinite are not one but many, and then againthat there are others [liquids and nasals and sibilants] which share not inpoviljbut in some kind of sound [pOoyyoJ],and that these too have somenumber;and he set apartwhat we now call a"Ova [stops] as a third kindof letter; then after this he divided those which are a`ipoyya and a"ipwvadown to each individual [letter-type], and he divided the vowels and theintermediates in the same way, until, having grasped their [total] number,he gave the name 'letter' to each and all of them" (18b8-c6); then, havingcollected the letters, Theuth reflects on the single knowledge that graspsthe whole system of letters, and calls it the art of letters or of writingFYpaOLAJLt"rI].A "letter" here [t%oiXrIovor ypa6g4a] is not necessarily a mark on paper,but, in the first instance, a phoneme, an indivisible unit of vocal sound(thus Aristotle defines aTotXEiovas (pwvi&tatipvto;, Poetics c20 1456b22):it is clear that Theuth, having begun with a bare sensory perception ofvocal sound in its infinite multiplicity, ended by collecting the genus"letter"or "phoneme,"and thatdiscovering this genus was a necessary pre-ments that the methodsof the Philebus are supposedto be the ivayov and 8taipewt;referredto in the Phaedrus,see E.E. Benitez, Forms in Plato's Philebus (Van Gorcum,1989), pp. 45-47; the parallelsthat Benitez assembles seem to me decisive. Plato usesforms of 6tatpeiv for the passage from the one to the many at Philebus 15a7, 18c3,20a6, and 20c4, and forms of axv&yEtvfor the passage from the many to the one at23eS, 25a3-4, and 25d6.


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COLLECTINGTHE LETTERS 293condition for inventing a conventional system of marks on paper, with atype of mark corresponding to each type of phoneme. But it is not clearhow Theuth was able to make this discovery. As Hackforth complains,"what Theuth has done is merely to give a name to a generic notion [i.e.'atoIxEiov'] which must have been present to his mind from the outset."2Although Plato claims that we can either begin with a known genus anddivide until we reach its infimae species, or begin with infimae species (ortheir individuals) and collect them until we apprehend the genus theybelong to, Hackforth thinks that Plato's second alternative is chimerical.If I take the species of a genus (say the different kinds of animal or ofletter), and ask for the genus, then in order to select these examples forinquiry, I must from the beginning have selected them as species of thatgenus, and so I must already have the generic concept, even if I have notyet given it a name. So there are not two methods but only one: "you muststart with the conjoint apprehension of a Genus and an indefinite Many,and proceed by division until you reach infimae species, where your taskends."3 It is this method, Hackforth adds, that Plato unwittingly windsup illustrating in the Theuth example: to know what to collect, Theuthmust always have had the concept of letter, and Plato shows him divid-ing it (note "68fipri"at 18c3) into its three main subclasses and then intotheir infimae species.

Hackforth's objection has been a notorious difficulty for the last fiftyyears; and I think it can be solved only if we reexamine, both what collec-tion and division mean, and what it was that Theuth was trying to collector to divide.

To begin with the second question: Plato says that Theuth began by"recognizing (povi as infinite" (18b6), so it would seem that it is (pwvqthat he ends by collecting as a unitary genus. Indeed, we have been toldearlier, in the discussion of division, that spoken qxovi is both one andinfinitely many (17b3-4), and that division begins with (pwvilas a unityand ends by dividing it into its infimae species; so that Theuth's treatmentof (pwviwould be simply the reverse of this division. However, the genericconcept that Theuth ends by discovering is not (pwv1but cuotxciov (18c6);these terms are definitely not equivalent, and, while Hackforth is certainlyright that Theuth must have had a concept of (pwvilas a unity from thebeginning, he need not have had the concept of aToXt-tov.Hackforth, in

2 R. Hackforth, Plato's Examination of Pleasure (Cambridge University Press,1945), p. 26.3 Hackforth, ibid.


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294 STEPHEN MENN

treatingthe Theuthstoryas a reverseof the divisionof (powl',is compelledto assume that (pwvijis the genus whose infimae species are the differentlettersor phonemes,so thatevery pwviwould be eithera vowel or a con-tinuantor a stop. But, for several reasons, this must be wrong.Theuthoriginallyrecognizes(pwvisimply by hearingspoken language:since nowrittenlanguageyet exists, and since Theuthhas not performedtheanaly-sis of languagethatwill leadhimto the conceptof motqidov,whathe ini-tiallyrecognizesis not a setof unitsof sound,butsimplycontinuousspeech.He recognizes(pwvi as anarpov, not because there are several kinds ofindivisible(povai,but because there are an unlimited variety of pwvcdaof all lengths.4In fact Plato avoids the plural pwvaci,preferringto speakof (pwviin the singularas somethingthatis both one andinfinitelymany;so perhapsit wouldbe betterto speakof manysectionsof povi]jor manymodificationsof (pxviratherthanof many qxnvac;but if we are to speakof qpwvxi,then syllables and words have at least as good a rightto becalled(poxiaas individuallettersdo. I do not know of a singleGreektextwhere a(wovihas the restrictedmeaning "phoneme":if letters are treatedas pwvai,they are only one particularkindof (pwvat,as in Aristotle'sdefi-nitionof rotoiXEiovas pwvi1a&a6ipvto;(Poeticsc20 1456b22,citedabove).But in fact it is doubtfulwhetherletters,andparticularlyconsonants,arepwvxiat all: the pseudo-AristotelianProblemsdescribeletters insteadas'ar Ti; ywvi;, andsay that consonantscombinewith vowels to producethe pluralityof utterances(6ta'Xcctot),which are nonethelessexpressionsof one and the same (pwvi (Problems X,38-9 895a4-14). And Plato,herein thestoryof Theuth,expresslydeniesthatconsonants jieTEXEVTi; (pWvii;(Philebus 18cl), so he can hardly be regardingthem as species of thegenus povi: thepointis thattheselettersby themselveseitherproducenosound at all, or, like liquids and nasals and sibilants, producea sound((p06yyo;)which is not properly(pwvi,because it is not a modulationof a

For a similar conclusion that (powv1here can refer to speech longer than a singlephoneme, see Gisela Striker,Peras und Apeiron: das Problem der Formen in PlatonsPhilebos (Vandenhoeckund Ruprecht,1970), pp. 24-30, where her "Sprache"corre-sponds to my "continuousspeech"and her "Laut"to my "phoneme."But Striker'sover-all interpetationof the passage is quite differentfrom mine. On the point immediatelyat hand, Striker says that Theuth's recognitionof pwvflas &tnetpovwas a recognition"daBdie gesprocheneSprachesich in unendlichviele Lauteinheiteneinteilen laBt,diein einer begrenztenAnzahlvon Arten zusammengefaBtwerden konnen"(p. 25). I thinkthatTheuth in recognizing9pvT'as oinetpovwas just noting the obvious fact thatthereis an unlimited variety of types of (pwvaiof all lengths. What was new was Theuth'sdiscovery that (pwvicould be reduced to a finite multiplicity, and this (rather than arecognitionof the a&itrpov)is what the cited passage of Striker really describes.


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COLLECTINGTHE LETTERS 295continuousstreamof air forcedout throughthe larynx;they producefull-fledged (pxvi only in combinationwith vowels.5So (pwvilin the Theuthstory is continuousspeech, and Theuthdiscoversthe lettersas things"in"speech (?v tC &lrripq, 18b8-9), which are not necessarily instances ofspeech.TheooTlEiX tfj; (povil;are,here as so often,a paradigmforapxciiin any realmof objects,andTheuthis depicted,not as dividingspeechintoits kinds, but as discoveringthe apxaciout of which speechis constituted.But how does he discover them? Ackrill's answer,in "In Defense ofPlatonic Division," was "by dividing."6Against Ryle (who had assumedthat8uxip-at;was always the divisionof a genusintoits species, andhadinferredthat it could not have beenof any philosophicalinterest),Ackrillarguedthat&taipern;forPlatocovereda wholefamily of methodsof analy-sis that could lead to defining a specific termor to clarifyinga generalconcept:the analysismightbe the divisionof a genus into its species, orthe division of a word into its differentsenses, or, as here,"the divisionof language into its elements"or minimal constituents.7Now Ackrill issurely right, both that the proceduresPlato describesin Philebus 16b5-18d2are meantto be collectionand division,and that what Theuthdoesis not simply to move up or down a genus-speciestree; and so he mustbe right that collection and division should be understoodmorebroadlythan this. But Theuth'sprocedurecannotbe division,since it is the "con-trary"(18a9) of the procedureof division describedin 16b5-17e6.It mustbe a passagefromtheinfinitelymanythroughthefinitelymany to theone,and thus a "collection"in some sense broaderthanmoving up a genus-species tree;and thisdespitethe factthatTheuth"divides"ordistinguishesthe differentstops, and the differentcontinuantsand vowels, at 18c3-5.How are we to understandthis kindof collection?

Othertextsof Platohelp to show thatavvayoy is not alwaysa matterof collecting generafromtheirspecies or individuals;or, at any rate,thatSimilarly at Theaetetus 203b2-8, a is &po'vov, merely a Wo'6o;and not a (poviwhile 0 is neithera povi'lnor even a Wo6po;:among the oqotEka,only the seven vowelsare gpovai.Aristotle in Poetics c20 gives essentially the same classification,dividingototXeiainto (pwvijvta and iTjitpcovaand povxva.Similarly Dionysius Thrax (ArsGrammaticac6) divides aoroq6xointo qpWv#lEvtaand 4vupWva,and the latter againinto figp(ov and aiix,va: the (pwvscvta are so called because they "produce a (pwvnof themselves," the a ipovvabecause "they do not have a pwvi by themselves, but

produce a (pcov when they are combined with the (pcovwEvta".6 In the volume Ryle, in the series "Modernstudies in philosophy"(edited by OscarP. Wood and George Pitcher, Macmillan, 1971), pp. 373-392; now reprinted inAckrill's Essays on Plato and Aristotle (ClarendonPress, 1997).7 Ackrill (in the Ryle volume), p. 380.


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296 STEPHENMENNit is not alwaysperspicuouslyso described.This is clearestfrom anexam-ple of collectionthatPlato gives in theStatesman, in explaininghow chil-dren learnto read andto spell, that is, to decipherthe individuallettersinwrittencombinationsso theycan pronouncewhat they see, andconverselyto detect the individual phonemesin audiblespeech so they can writedown what they hear.8Plato supposes that the childrencan alreadyrec-ognize the letterswhen they see them or hearthemin certainsimple andfamiliarsyllabiccombinations,but that theybecome confusedandcannotdiscern the same letterswhen they see themor hear them in unfamiliaror morecomplicatedsyllables(277e2-278a3).In such a case, Plato says,the right methodfor teachingthe childrento discern the letters even inthe initiallyconfusing syllables is to presentthe confusingsyllableside-by-sidewith a familiarsyllablecontainingan identicalletter,and then "toshow thatthe same likenessand natureis presentin bothcombinations,until the ones that were gotten right [ra ooac~o'6vca&0T&;jhave beendisplayed next to all the unknownones; and when these have been dis-played as models, they will bring[the children],among all the lettersinall the syllables, to name the one that is differentas differentfrom theothers,andtheone that is thesameas the sameandalwaysaliketo itself"(278bl-cl). Plato describesthis methodof displayingthe same letterin

8 What Plato says is that the childrenare coming to be ypa taTov ?wj`upoi (277e3-4), and thatthey learn to discernthe arotXEixwithin the aUx aa4i. The large majorityof scholars - at least Cousin, Campbell,A.E. Taylor, Skemp, Guthrie, Crombie,andBenardete- have taken this as referringonly to decipheringwritten letters(learningtoread),and not also to distinguishingspoken phonemes(learningto spell). But thereisnojustificationfor this in Plato's words (perhapssome scholars have thought,wrongly,thatyp&gqaTtaare necessarilywritten), and ChristopherRowe, in his recenttranslation(Aris and Phillips, 1995), glosses "becomingypajxq.t6tov4urstpoi" as "acquiringskillin reading and writing,"which is what the phrase would normallyimply. Everythingthat Plato goes on to say applies to both cases, though some remarkswould go moresmoothly with one case, and some with the other.The inclusive interpretationis sup-portedby a parallel text in the Theaetetus:when you learnedypa6igiaTaas a child,what you were learningwas "to discern each of the lettersby itself both in sight andin hearing,so that their[different]positionsmight not confuse you, when they are spo-ken or when they are written"(Theaetetus206a5-8). The two cases are closely anal-ogous, and even if Plato has one case chiefly in mind in the Statesmanpassage, theprocedureof learningthat he wants to illustratewould work the same way in both.Plato talks about learningto spell or to discern the phonemes within audible speechin the Theuthpassage of the Philebus and at Theaetetus207d8-208b6;he talks aboutlearningto read or decipherthe letters in written texts at RepublicII 368dl-7 and III402a7-b7.


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COLLECTINGTHE LETTERS 297two syllables as collection, oauvaiyv: "the same thing, being present insomething else at a distance, is gotten right and collected [8ota6ojRevovOPOi;; KOaiO1)vaXOEv],and produces a single true opinion about bothtogether" (278c4-6).9 In this example, as in more straightforwardexam-ples of collecting a generic nature from its species or individual instances,I bring two or more objects together for comparison, and by doing so Inotice some aspect in which they are alike, so that I am brought to aware-ness of a nature identically present in the different objects - the genericnature "animal" present in a dog and a horse, or the letter a present inthe syllables Poaand ya. Collecting a could in fact be described as aninstance of collecting a genus: if, instead of saying that pa and ya aresimilar in respect of a, I say that the a in Pa is similar to the a in ya,then in recognizing the common nature I am collecting the genus a fromits individuals, or from its species a-preceded-by-, and a-preceded-by-y.Nonetheless, this is not a perspicuous way to describe what I am doingin collecting a and the other letters, which is to learn to recognize theletters within a syllable pa or ya, and thus to understand the syllable asresulting from the letters (so that I can pronounce it, or spell it, correctly).Plato speaks of the children as "discerning" the letters (tlaioOavra9at,277e7), and the point must be that they are initially presented with thesyllable as an undifferentiated whole, and must learn to distinguish the

3-componentfrom the a-component within it (whether by sight or by hear-ing). I learn to distinguish Poainto its components just by comparing thesyllable, both to other syllables containing ,Band to other syllables contain-ing a. So, although I can say that I collect the genus a from individual a's,those individuals were not given to me prior to the act of collecting: Icome to recognize both the genus a and the individual a's by comparingthe different syllables that contain an a.It is clear that this text from the Statesman helps to show in what senseTheuthwas "collecting" when he collected the many particularletters,beforecollecting the single genus "letter." As we have seen, Theuth was initiallyconfronted, not with many neatly separated phonemes waiting to be clas-

I take a-uvaXOevin 278c6 as supplementing ?v rE'pp 8teanaopivcp &oa6tOvovop8is, not as going with the following irepiE'Kaxcpov.But however we construe thesentence (it has several difficulties including a textual question), there is a auvayoi,a "collection" or "bringing together"of the same letter in the two syllables, and thisact of collecting is, or is intimately connected with, the act of recognizing it as thesame in both. For why Plato insists on speaking here of "true opinion" ratherthan ofknowledge, see Section II below.


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298 STEPHEN MENNsified, but with the infinitevarietyof continuousspeech((pwvij).The onlyway he could discernthe letterswithin all this soundwas to comparedif-ferentsegmentsof speech,presumablysyllables,andto noticewhatelementsof sound they had in common. Theuthwas thus doing for the firsttimewhat the childrenlearningtheir lettersrepeatunderthe guidanceof theirtutors,in discerningthe differentphonemesin spokenlanguage.A npcoro;Ei)pEt like Theuth was needed to compare the different syllables of spo-ken language, and to collect the particularletters or phonemeswithinthem, in order to establish the writing-systemthat the childrenare nowlearning.For Theuthto do this, withouta guide, would of coursebe muchmoredifficultthanfor a child to do it now, and Plato has choseninTheuthan excellent example of the difficultyand importanceof collection.TounderlinePlato'spointaboutthedifficultyandimportanceof Theuth'stask, it is worthnoting that, in modernscholarlyopinion,the inventionofalphabeticwritingwas roughlyas Plato describesit, except that, by omit-ting any pre-alphabeticwriting,Platotelescopes the processso muchthathe makesit hardto imaginehowanyonecouldhaveperformedtherequiredcollection. Plato speaks as if Theuthhad simply discernedthe repeatingphoneme-typeswithin the continuousstreamof (pwv',and realizedthatallgpwvi'couldbe reducedto them. But it is intellectuallymoreplausible,andhistoricallytruerto theEgyptianwriting-systemandto otherearlywriting-systems that we know of, for thereto be several stagesof analysis:firstspeech is analyzed into words, then words into syllables, and then sylla-bles into phonemes,and differentwriting-systemsrecorddifferentlevelsof analysis.At the first stage, each word mightbe representedby a singlesign. At a later stage, when a single syllabic constituentis recognizedwithin many differentspokenwords, a single sign (perhapsa sign used tostandfor this syllable when it formsa whole word by itself) canbe usedto representthe same syllable in any word that it occurs in: this mightfirstariseas an ad hoc device for representinghard-to-symbolizeabstractwords and inflectionalmorphemesby rebus-writing,but once sufficientlymany syllable-typeshavebeen collected,in principleeverywordcould bereducedto them. Only by a furtheranalysisare individualphonemesdis-cerned within the syllables. Sometimesa given syllable is or becomesmonophonemic,and the monophonemic"syllable"can thenbe recognizedwithin othersyllables;or thesoundrecognizedas the firstphonemeof onesyllable (and representedby the sign for this syllable)is also recognizedwithin others. If sufficientlymany phoneme-typesare collected in thisway, all syllablescan be reducedto them,and a purelyalphabeticsystemof writing becomes possible. What actually happensin Egyptianis an


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COLLECTINGTHE LETTERS 299unsystematiccompromise:while thereis an "alphabet,"it is always sup-plementedby othertypesof sign.'0Onlyaftera long processof collectingfirst syllables and then letterscoulda single uprETn;collect enoughletters,until, as Plato says of Theuth, "having grasped their [total]number,hegave the name'letter'[totOIX6ov]to each and all of them;then seeing thatnone of us would learnany one of themaxiroXca' oxirrowithoutthe others,and reasoningthat this bond is one andmakesall these [letters]somehowone, he proclaimeda single artof writing[ypag,uant"t?v11] over them"(Philebus 18c5-d2).This final step was never taken in Egyptian,or inSumerianor Akkadian,but first in Phoenician.Of course,once an alpha-bet has been inventedin one language,it is a smallerstep for someoneto reduce a second languageto alphabeticwriting;but it still requiresprocessesof collection even to reduce the wordsof the second languageto the phonemesdiscoveredin the first language,and much more so if therepresentationof the second languagerequirescollectingadditionalpho-nemes, or distinguishingbetween phonemesnot distinguishedin the firstlanguage. But however this happens,what is logically requiredat eachstage in the developmentof a writing-systemis somethingmuchlike theprocessof collection that Plato ascribesto Theuth.Plato stresses that Theuthwas able to establishhis writing-systemonlybecause,when "compelledto graspthe infinite first" and to seek a onewithin the infinity of pwv1l, he did not "look immediately to the one, butrecognizedthat each multiplicityis delimitedby some number,and fromall these finally reacheda one" (Philebus 18bl-4): this was the point Platohadset out to illustratein theTheuthstory. If Theuthhadsimply declared

10 I have oversimplifiedin one respect: Egyptianphonetic representationsrely onlyon consonants and sequences of consonants,and do not "collect" and symbolize thevowels. But any writing-system, including the Phoenician or Greek, "collects" onlysome featuresof (pwvi, enough to representmost meaningfulutteranceswithout practi-cal ambiguity,and"lets go into the infinite"(Philebus 16e2) the more subtle variations,especially in vowel quality. On the Egyptianwriting-system and otherwriting-systemsin the ancient Near East, see G.R. Driver, Semitic Writing:from Pictograph to Alpha-bet (revised edition, ed. S.A. Hopkins, 1976, published by OxfordUniversity Press forthe BritishAcademy),especially his discussion of "theEgyptianpseudo-alphabet,"pp.132-6. Fora practicalaccountof the Egyptianwriting-systemsee AlanGardiner,EgyptianGrammar(ClarendonPress, 1927), especially pp. 6-9 and pp. 25-8. Egyptian writingis made very complex by the combinationof differentsystems of representation;BarryPowell works through two examples in detail in Homer and the Origins of the GreekAlphabet (CambridgeUniversity Press, 1991), pp. 79-85. I.J. Gelb's A Study of Writing(Universityof Chicago Press, second edition, 1963) is a stimulatingoverview but con-tains some very idiosyncraticjudgments (unfortunatelytaken over by Powell).


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300 STEPHEN MENN"thenatureof OTotX6iovis presentin all (povij"or even "all (pwv) consistsof vowels, stops, and intermediateconsonants,"he would have no wayto representthe differentspoken syllables in writing. Plato stresses thatTheuth"recognizedthatthevowels in this infiniteare not one but many. . .then after this he divided [the stops] down to each individual [letter-type], and he divided the vowels and the intermediatesin the same way,until, having graspedtheir [total] number,he gave the name 'letter' toeach and all of them"(18b8-c6). If Theuthhad collected the letterstoohastily - say, if he had failed to distinguishaspiratedfrom unaspiratedstops and so counted1 and (por X and 0 or K andXas the same letter-and so had fallen shortof the full numberof phonemesin the language,and if he hadthen assigneda conventionalwrittenmarkto each phonemehe had recognized,then his writing-systemwould be defective,in that itwould not be able to representthe spoken syllables unambiguously.Thisis why, in an illustrationof the right methodof collection, Plato stressesthatTheuthdivided(5tfprt) the stops:Plato's lessonis notthatit is impor-tant to collect, but that it is importantto collect criticallyand unhastily,and this canbe doneonly by dividingor distinguishingthe differentthingsyou arecollecting.A more carefulcomparisonof syllableswill bringout,not only that some of them share"unvoiceddental stop"in common,butthat some of them share "unvoicedunaspirateddental stop" and othersshare"unvoicedaspirateddental stop."When Theuthhas collected all thephonemicallydistinctprimitivesounds of his language,thenhe can makethefinalcollectionof thegenus "letter,"andassignwrittenmarks;thecol-lection is really sufficientif he can then reconstructthe syllables fromwhich he began, by spelling them out unambiguouslyin terms of the let-ters they contain.

IIPlato describesTheuth's procedurein collectingthe lettersbecause it issupposedto give us a modelforhow to discover&pXaiin general,the let-ters of "the long and difficultsyllablesof reality"(Statesman 278d4-5):theseapXaiare, especially,theForms,andespeciallythe most basic of theForms.Platowantsboth to recommendcollectionas a methodforcomingto knowledgeof the Forms,andto warnagainstthedangersof over-hastycollectionin this context.It is not immediatelyobviouswhy collection and division are neededin comingto know the Forms.The Republic,which lays greatstress onthe importanceand difficultyof knowingthe Forms,and on dialecticas


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COLLECTINGTHE LETrERS 301the means for coming to know them, says nothing about collection anddivision; and we may wonder why the Phaedrus and Philebus insist thatonly these are the proper methods of dialectic, and indeed of all scientificdiscovery. Republic VII suggests that dialecticians come to know theForms through definition: the dialectician is the person who can give andreceive a k6yo; saying what each thing is (531d9-e5, 534b3-6), or whocan 6topioaaOa lxokX6ypeach Form (534b8-cl); apparently we will dis-cover the Form or ou5diaof each thing simply by trying different possibledefinitions for the thing, and seeing whether they survive all honest at-tempts at refutation by question and answer (534c1-3). But there is obvi-ously something wrong with this proposal. If a koyo; is a verbal formulasaying what each thing is, then "since it is composed out of nouns andverbs, it is not stable, not stably enough" (Seventh Letter 343b4-6): wecannot overcome the unfixity of all names simply by fixing them to eachother. Clearly we cannot define all the Forms without circularity; at leastthe most basic Forms must be immune to definition, and must be knownin some other way. Plato seems to be making this point in the Theaetetus,in criticizing the thesis of the Republic that "he who cannot give andreceive a ko6yo does not have knowledge about the thing" (Theaetetus202c2-3, cp. Republic VII 531d9-e5, 534b3-6): as Plato now says, thiswould imply that the primitive toiqeita in terms of which koyot are givenwould themselves be unknowable, whereas in fact, as our childhood expe-rience of gavOivetv -& ypicggaxta shows (203al-2, 206al-3), letters areboth more knowable and more crucial to know than the syllables are(206b5-1 1).

The example of pavO&vrivta yp6j.tatct, as the Theaetetus explains it,gives an alternative model of how we know simple &pXai.What we didin learning our letters was to try "to discern [6iayuyvdxcYKtv]each of theletters by itself [aXo' KaX' abto] both in sight and in hearing, so that their[different] positions might not confuse you, when they are spoken or whenthey are written" (206a5-8): thus the knowledge of simples which (Platosays) is crucial for mastering the whole art, is an ability to recognize thesimples as they occur in complexes, without mistaking any one of the sim-ples for any other. In this passage, andin the Statesmanpassage on gavO&vrIvtia ypaggaaxa,what distinguishes knowledge of the simples from true opin-ion about the simples is that it involves consistently recognizing them incomplexes. Thus the children in the Statesman who can correctly identifythe letters in a short and familiar syllable, but misidentify the same letterswhen they occur in an unfamiliar syllable, are carefully credited only withright opinion (278a9, 278c5, and - when the letters are metaphorical for


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302 STEPHEN MENNprinciples of reality - 278d4). If at first they misidentify the letter 4in"xfti ix", they can learn to correct their false opinion about 4 as itoccurs in this syllable by comparing it with their true opinion about 4 asit occurs in "ZElS", as Meno's slave learns to correct his false mathemati-cal opinions by his true mathematical opinions; but this merely replacesthe false opinions by true opinions, and does not yet turnthem into knowl-edge (Statesman 278c6, Meno 85b8-dl). The true opinions about 4 in dif-ferent combinations become knowledge of 4 only when they are "tieddown," so that we consistently recognize 4 in whatever combination itoccurs in, and never falsely identify it when it is not in fact present. Sothe Theaetetus argues that a child who "in writing 'Theaetetus' [presum-ably from dictation] thinks he ought to write theta and epsilon, and doesin fact write them, but in trying to write 'Theodorus' thinks he shouldwrite tau and epsilon and does in fact write those letters" does not knowthe syllable Oe,although he has a true opinion about it on the first occasion(Theaetetus 207e7-208a3); nor does the child know 0 or x, since he has atrue opinion about 0 on one occasion but mistakes 0 for T on another.Boththe Theaetetus and the Statesman intend to draw a lesson about "the longand difficult syllables of reality" (Statesman 278d4-5): I do not yet knowthe (let us say) indefinable Form Animal until I can recognize it wher-ever I encounter it in things, nor do I know the definable Form Man, evenif I have memorized the formula "man is a mortal rationalanimal",unless Ican recognize Man, and his animality and rationality and mortality, wher-ever he may be encountered.

Given this Theaetetus-Statesman understanding of what it is to knowthe letters and syllables of reality, the method of collection (by which thechildren in the Statesman learn their letters) is a natural way to pursueknowledge, and especially knowledge of simples. The reason why it isdifficult to recognize the letters of reality, and in particularthe Forms, isthat they appear in many guises, and this is because they appear in manycombinations. Already in the Republic, in trying to explain why most peo-ple do not know the one beautiful-itself (and likewise for the other Forms)but only have opinions about the many beautiful things, Plato says that"although each [of the Forms] is one, yet because they appear everywherein combination with actions and with bodies and with each other, eachappears to be many" (Republic V 476a5-7). So a plausible way to cometo know the one Form X is to collect different combinations in which Xoccurs, especially combinations XY and XZ with other Forms Y and Z,and try to discern what these different combinations have in common; thisshould help us to recognize X wherever we see it, and to spell out the


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COLLECTINGTHE LETTERS 303more complex Forms in terms of X and their other constituents, as wellas to spell out the internal structureof X itself if it has one.

When I compare the syllables Pa and ya, I am led not only to recognizethe common constituent a, but also to separate a from a and from y. Asthe Theaetetus puts it, I come to discern each letter aiUo KaxO'at6o (206a6-7): this enables me, when I hear "ha" spoken, to separate it into its com-ponents, so that I can repeat back separately "'4ira, iXk(pa",instead ofmerely repeating back "na". In the example that Aristotle credits to YoungSocrates, if we had never seen circles separate (Xcpt6o'gva) from bronze,it might be difficult for us to make the separation in thought (a(patp?1iv-r8iavoia) and to recognize that bronze does not belong to the essence ofcircle; as it is, by comparing circles in bronze with circles in wood orstone, we can separate the essence of circle from each of these materials(Metaphysics Z 1036a31-b3). It is genuinely Platonic to speak in this wayof a human act of separating things that are presented to us inseparately:the senses perceive heavy and light or great and small "not KEXOptGOE'VOVbut as something auy xFugvov", but thought has the task of seeing them8&woplcgEvaor KEXWptagEva,since if it perceived them aXxptara it wouldperceive greatness and smallness not as two things but as one (RepublicVII 524a6-c8). Collection can help me separate out the letters, but if thisis to give me knowledge of the original syllables, I must not only separatethe letters but also know how they can recombine; in Socrates' program-matic words in the Parmenides, I must be able "first to divide [Sia(tpriOat]the Forms separately themselves by themselves... and then to show thatthey can be combinedand uncombined[GnryXEp6vvixOat, 1aCKpiveCa0a1]among themselves" (Parmenides 129d6-e3)."1Plato does not suggest inthe Parmenides or elsewhere that the separation of the Forms is a mistake:Parmenides praises Socrates for taking the first step by separating theForms (130blff), and if Socrates then gets into difficulties it is because hehas tried to separate them too hastily, ptpiv'ylIivaavat, and cannot givean adequate account of how they are related to each other and to partici-pants and knowers.'2

" The comparisonwith the letters is madeexplicit in the Sophist, whereypaiZaTutlknows what letters will combine and what letterswill not (252e9-253al2), and dialec-tic knows the analogous things about the Forms.

12 Parmenides' terminology for separation varies (he says SictprioOci Xwpi; at129d7 and 130b2, bpi4'c3Oatat 135a2, b7, and c8-9), but the context shows that thereis no difference in sense between these expressions. It is not as if he were (e.g.) infavor of opi4rccOatand against 8catpeicOatxopi;; he is in favor of 6pi'eacAi and


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304 STEPHENMENN

Many texts of the laterdialogues seem intended,in differentways, towarn againstthe dangersof over-hastycollection;often,as in the Theuthstory, the remedysuggestedis to divide (6tatpciv)the thingswe are col-lecting, so as to avoid the analogue of taking t and 0 to be a singlephoneme.To know the letter0, it is not enough to be able to identify0consistentlywhereverit is present:we mustalso consistentlynot identifysomethingas 0 when it is reallyT, and this is just what it means to divide0 fromT. So the Sophistsays thatthe taskof dialecticis "to divide accord-ing to kinds [Kcatnyev115lcipEciaOaland not to think that the same formis differentor that a formwhich is differentis the same,"and then to seehow they can combine (253dl-3, cf. d9-e2). Aaipeosi; here is simply thenonconfusionof the differentFormswhich the dialecticianhas identifiedand must reidentify,notably Being and Motionand Rest and Samenessand Difference:since both the Giantsand the Friendsof the Formshavecollected Being too hastily, and have confusedit either with Motionorwith Rest, the dialecticianmust correcttheirconfusionsby "dividing"thelettersof realityas Theuthdivided the letters(BeingandMotionand Restare comparedto letters at 253al). But this kind of division cannot bereducedto thedivisionof a genusintospecies,sinceI can"divide"a Formfrom anotherForm whose extension it contains(as Being fromMotion),or evenfroma coextensiveForm(as BeingfromSameness,sincetheybothapply to everything).To separatesomethingcorrectlyis thus not just to collect it, but alsoto divide what we collect, to distinguisheach thingfromthe otherthingsit might be confusedwith. Plato had first introducedthe paircollectionanddivision,in the Phaedrus,as a guardagainsttheover-hastycollectionof ?poy,and of gavviain Socrates'firstspeech,which hadfailed to distin-guish the kinds,andhad assumedthatwhatwas true of the kind of iCpo;the speaker had observed was true of gpo; as such. Likewise in thePhilebus,Plato brings up collectionand division becauseProtarchushasbeen toohastyincollectingpleasure.Protarchusassumesthathe hasgraspedthenatureof pleasurein general,andthat"although[pleasures]arisefromcontrarythings,theyare not themselvescontraryto one another"(12d7-8),noreven unlike,"notinsofaras theyarepleasures"(13cS).ForProtarchus,as for the Socratesof theProtagoras(351c-e),this is enoughto inferthat,since pleasurein the abstractis betterthanits contrary,all pleasuremustbe good, and that if anythingpleasantis bad, this is not insofaras it isthus of zalpEcioOactXpi;, but against doing this incautiously, p'pivyxUgza6fvt.('Opite!Ocaz here does not mean "to define"in the technical sense, but simply to sep-arateor distinguishsomethingfrom everythingelse.)


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COLLECTINGTHE LETTERS 305pleasant, but because of some other attributeit shares in (because it causesor presupposes a greater pain). Protarchus' problem is thus the oppositeof Meno's. Meno had been unable to answer the question "what is virtue"except by describing separately the virtues of a man, of a woman, of achild, of a slave, because he was unable to collect what these virtues havein common. Socrates, in urging him to collect and to describe the singlenature of virtue, argues that even if bees are of many kinds and differfrom one another, they do not differ insofar as they are bees, but only intheir size or their beauty or something else of this kind (Meno 72bl-7),so that it should be possible to describe the one thing in which bees, orvirtues, do not differ. Now in the Philebus, while still insisting on thenecessity of collecting one nature from its many manifestations, Plato iswarning against a temptation to which the theory of Forms is peculiarlyliable, to conceive all X's as being the same inasmuch as they are X, andto put down all their differences to imperfect participation in the X-itself,and to participationin other forms.'3 (In the extreme case, this means say-ing that all stops are the same, inasmuch as they are stops, and that theirdifferences are due to their being only imperfectly stops, or to their beingcombined with continuants or vowels; so that there is no need to distin-guish more than three letters, "stop"and "continuant"and "vowel", in orderto represent all syllables in writing.) Meno's problem and Protarchus' areeach, at root, failures of intellectual perception, for which there is no guar-anteed treatment. But no treatment can possibly succeed until we over-come the eristic arguments that serve to excuse these failures, Meno'sargument that the single common naturecannot be known and Protarchus'argument that that nature, insofar as it is that one nature, cannot also bemany, and cannot differ from itself or have contrary attributes. Meno can-not answer his question whether virtue is teachable until he knows whatvirtue is, and he cannot know this until he collects the single nature fromits many manifestations. And Protarchusand Socrates cannot resolve theirdispute about whether the best life is one of pleasure or of knowledgeuntil they can collect pleasure and knowledge critically and without con-fusion, dividing and separating their kinds: they can then determine thevalue of each separated kind of pleasure and of knowledge, and see howto recombine them into the best human life.'4McGill University

31 This seems to be Socrates' temptationat Parmenides 128e4-130a2.14 1 would like to thankAlexanderNehamasand the editors of Phronesis for com-ments on earlier versions, and Rachel Barney and Ian Mueller for useful discussion.

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Collecting the Letters

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