Testimony

Use in the book

Socrates announces that he will provide witnesses for the sign’s effects. The following stories do not all offer evidence of the same kind. Charmides can be asked what resulted from the training undertaken against the warning, but the audience is not told the result within this dialogue. Clitomachus can report Timarchus’ final explanation of why he is going to die. Socrates supplies the preceding party narrative. Concerning Sicily, many people can reportedly attest what Socrates said before the army’s destruction. These are invitations to consult named or plural informants, not scenes in which those informants appear and give independent evidence before Theages.

Sannion’s case explicitly changes the time structure. Past occurrences can be heard from those who know; now the listeners can test whether the sign says anything of consequence. Sannion has already departed, and Socrates forecasts death or something close and fears for the army. The outcome is not narrated. Treating all four examples as completed and equally verified predictions eliminates the contrast Socrates himself draws.

The later Aristides story has another evidential qualification. It is Socrates’ report of Aristides’ self-description. Aristides insists that what he says is unbelievable but true, and twice qualifies his remembered advantage by apparent standing or how it seemed to him. The dialogue does not independently measure his progress or reproduce a test of his former and present abilities. His testimony remains important evidence within the dramatic argument; its form also limits what the reader can conclude.

Places to read

1. 128dμάρτυρας παρέξομαι — Socrates promises witnesses for the preventive effects
2. 128e–129a2ἄξιον … πυθέσθαι αὐτοῦ — Charmides’ outcome is referred to inquiry
3. 129aΚλειτόμαχον ἔρεσθε — the audience is invited to question Timarchus’ brother
4. 129c–dπολλῶν ἀκούσεσθον — many informants can report the Sicilian predictions
5. 129dτὰ … παρεληλυθότα τῶν εἰδότων … ἀκοῦσαι — completed events have knowledgeable witnesses
6. 129dπεῖραν … νυνὶ λαβεῖν — the current expedition supplies a prospective test
7. 130dἄπιστον … ἀληθές — Aristides acknowledges the incredibility of his own claim while asserting its truth

Translation in this edition

The translation retains the invitations to ask and hear, and keeps “I think” in the Sannion forecast. Notes 34 and 362 provide historical context without making the dialogue narrate later news. The distinction between a textual assertion and independently established evidence remains indispensable.

Ask; inquire — ἔρεσθαι

Ask; inquire. To question a person; the imperative directs the listeners to Clitomachus about Timarchus’ final statement. Attested: ἔρεσθε (129a). Witnesses, reports, and incomplete evidence.

Find out by inquiry — πυνθάνεσθαι

Find out by inquiry. To obtain information by asking; Charmides’ actual outcome is left for the listeners to investigate. Attested: πυθέσθαι (128e). Witnesses, reports, and incomplete evidence.

Hear from — ἀκούειν (akouein)

ἀκούειν (akouein)

Hear from. To receive a report; the dual future addresses both listeners as able to hear witnesses to the Sicilian prediction. Attested: ἀκούσεσθον (129d). Witnesses, reports, and incomplete evidence.

Have passed; be past — παρέρχεσθαι

Have passed; be past. To have elapsed; the participle substantively names completed occurrences contrasted with the current prospective test. Attested: παρεληλυθότα (129d). Witnesses, reports, and incomplete evidence.

Know — εἰδέναι (eidenai)

εἰδέναι (eidenai)

Know. To possess knowledge of the past events; the participle identifies people who can provide the retrospective reports. Attested: εἰδότων (129d). Witnesses, reports, and incomplete evidence.

Witness — μάρτυς (martys) · μάρτυρας (128d).

μάρτυς (martys)

Witness. A person able to attest relevant events; Socrates offers witnesses for his account of the preventive sign. Attested: μάρτυρας (128d). Witnesses, reports, and incomplete evidence.

It is worth asking him (contextual phrase)

128e: ἄξιον οὖν πυθέσθαι αὐτοῦ. Socrates directs the listeners to ask Charmides about what followed his disregarded warning. The statement invokes an accessible witness but does not narrate the particular injury or loss. Filling that silence with an imagined defeat or bodily accident would exceed the source. See Charmides and training and Witnesses.

Use in the book

The reports of experience on pages 25–262 are mediated through people and places not named in the printed account. The reader is directed to honour- and truth-loving members of the Art. Pages 27–282 make a parallel case for written witnesses: the Philosophers' surviving works testify with alleged unanimity, and honest learned men should not casually be presumed to lie deliberately to their neighbours' harm and their own dishonour. The moral presumption supports trust but does not replace the reader's duty to understand what is testified.

The restriction on page 38 is striking beside that defence. No person, whoever he is and whatever his estate, should receive complete credence for or against the matter unless he gives a sound account. The simple layman's assertion that he knows cannot excuse the lack of reasons. Similarly, the effective tingent's possession of a substance does not make him an infallible oracle concerning its preparation. Witnessing an effect and possessing the knowledge behind it are different qualifications.

Testimony thus remains structured by the proposition at stake. Experience may support that a power exists, while causal explanation is required to judge whether this claimant understands its subject. The book's trust in ancient writers is not simple indiscriminate deference; its named authorities are repeatedly read under Nature's possibility. At the same time, the reader should distinguish these declared standards from independently verified evidence that the particular unnamed witnesses met them.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 26The uninformed reader is directed to truthful members of the Art for reports of experience.
2. 1599 p. 27Surviving writings act as witnesses to matter, preparation, manifestations, and use.
3. 1599 p. 28The argument presumes that a good person will not deliberately lie to another’s detriment.
4. 1599 p. 38Complete credence is refused to any claimant who cannot give a sound account.
5. 1599 p. 155Displayed transmutation does not make the performer an infallible oracle.

Translation in this edition

English testimony gathers several German and Latin forms without claiming they are invariant synonyms. Monumenta are enduring memorials that can carry testimony; experience describes part of what can be testified to. Keeping these objects distinct prevents a written report from being silently converted into Khunrath's own eyewitness observation.

Use in the book

Several different tests apply to A Square. His account of Women is explicitly partisan in vocabulary and repeatedly makes inference from shape do the work of moral judgement. His political admiration exposes the interests of his class. His later admission that the explanation he gave his Wife was not wholly truthful supplies a direct instance of concealment. These are stronger grounds for criticism than a general assumption that first-person fiction is deceptive.

A different problem concerns the events in Part II. The narrative labels the journeys to Lineland and Pointland as visions associated with sleep, while telling the visit to Spaceland as an experience brought about by the Sphere. The reader should preserve that distinction even when the ending expresses doubt. The dream in §202 includes a repentant Sphere; it does not establish that the waking teacher returned to retract its refusal.

Memory imposes a further limit. The narrator has trouble reproducing a Cube in mental vision and later cannot confidently recover its exact shape. This does not retrospectively prove that there was no experience. It shows the difficulty of maintaining a representation without the perceptual and social resources that once supported it.

The Preface23 adds a second witness-like voice whose role is itself mediated. The fictional Editor reports, interprets and summarises; he also grades the persuasiveness of the Square's defences. No single layer stands outside every qualification. This arrangement invites discriminating trust: attend to exact claims, circumstances, admissions and differences between report and judgement.

The ending's suffering gives this discrimination an ethical dimension. Dismissing a prisoner because his description is imperfect can repeat the institution's cruelty. Treating everything he believes as demonstrated would erase the intellectual caution the book also asks of its readers. The memoir seeks a hearer capable of listening closely without converting sympathy into certainty.

Places to read

1. Preface23“interpreter and summarizer” discloses a layer of mediation
2. § 202“Vision” in the heading marks the status of the encouraging scene
3. § 212“not quite so consistent with truth” admits the concealment practised upon the Wife
4. § 2223“everything that I had seen and heard in fact or vision” distinguishes kinds of reported experience
5. § 2223“I cannot honestly say I am confident” makes a limitation part of the witness's candour

In this edition

The modern Afterword2345678 discusses narrator, prejudice and the ending. Those analyses are helpful companions, but they do not replace the scene-by-scene evidence. In particular, neither a wholly redeemed narrator nor an all-a-dream solution is treated here as a fact established by the primary text.

Incredulity · Preface

Unwillingness or inability to believe. General incredulity and mockery, as well as imprisonment and age, are said to have damaged the Square's mind. Printed form: incredulity (Preface23). See Unreliability testimony and the burden of telling.

Terminology

The specialised words needed to describe a domain. The Square's loss of terminology is part of his declining ability to keep the experience of Space available. Printed form: terminology (Preface23). See Unreliability testimony and the burden of telling.

Vigour

Mental strength or energy. The Editor contrasts the Square's former vigour with the condition produced by imprisonment, public disbelief and age. Printed form: vigour (Preface23). See Unreliability testimony and the burden of telling.