Date: 360-355 B.C.

"Imagine, then, for the sake of argument, that our minds contain a block of wax, which in this or that individual may be larger or smaller, and composed of wax that is comparatively pure or muddy, and harder in some, softer in others, and sometimes of just the right consistency."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

"When a person has what the poet's wisdom commends as a 'shaggy heart,' or when the block is muddy or made of impure wax, or oversoft or hard, the people with soft wax are quick to learn, but forgetful, those with hard wax the reverse."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

"'Having' [knowledge] seems to me different from 'possessing.' If a man has bought a coat and owns it, but is not wearing it, we should say he possesses it without having it about him."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

"Now consider whether knowledge is a thing you can possess in that way without having it about you, like a man who has caught some wild birds--pigeons or what not--and keeps them in an aviary he has made for them at home."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

While having knowledge may be analogous to a man who "has" birds in an aviary, "in another sense he 'has' none of them, though he has got control of them, now that he has made them captive in an enclosure of his own; he can take and have hold of them whenever he likes by catching any bird he choo...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

"Once more then, just as a while ago we imagined a sort of waxen block in our minds, so now let us suppose that every mind contains a kind of aviary stocked with birds of every sort, some in flocks apart from the rest, some in small groups, and some solitary, flying in any direction among them all."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

"When we are babies we must suppose this receptacle empty, and take the birds to stand for pieces of knowledge."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

"Perhaps, Socrates, we were wrong in making the birds stand for pieces of knowledge only, and we ought to have imagined pieces of ignorance flying about with them in the mind."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

"Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs; but differs, in that I attend men and not women, and I look after their souls when they are in labour, and not after their bodies: and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man b...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

"Let us call it the gift of the Muses' mother, Memory, and say that whenever we wish to remember something we see or hear or conceive in our own minds, we hold this wax under the perceptions or ideas and imprint them on it as we might stamp the impression of a seal ring."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)