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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: and inconsistent. The magnificent figure under which the nature of the
soul is described has not much to do with the popular doctrine of the
ideas. Yet there is one little trait in the description which shows that
they are present to Plato's mind, namely, the remark that the soul, which
had seen truths in the form of the universal, cannot again return to the
nature of an animal.
In the Phaedo, as in the Meno, the origin of ideas is sought for in a
previous state of existence. There was no time when they could have been
acquired in this life, and therefore they must have been recovered from
another. The process of recovery is no other than the ordinary law of
association, by which in daily life the sight of one thing or person
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