If he did not in an unqualified sense of the term know the existence
of this triangle, how could he know without qualification that its
angles were equal to two right angles? No: clearly he knows not
without qualification but only in the sense that he knows universally.
If this distinction is not drawn, we are faced with the dilemma in the
Meno: either a man will learn nothing or what he already knows; for we
cannot accept the solution which some people offer. A man is asked,
'Do you, or do you not, know that every pair is even?' He says he does
know it. The questioner then produces a particular pair, of the
existence, and so a fortiori of the evenness, of which he was unaware.
The solution which some people offer is to assert that they do not
know that every pair is even, but only that everything which they know
to be a pair is even: yet what they know to be even is that of which
they have demonstrated evenness, i.e. what they made the subject of
their premiss, viz. not merely every triangle or number which they
know to be such, but any and every number or triangle without
reservation. For no premiss is ever couched in the form 'every
number which you know to be such', or 'every rectilinear figure
which you know to be such': the predicate is always construed as
applicable to any and every instance of the thing.
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