[Side-note: Questions of Sokrates thereupon. What good does self-knowledge procure for us? What is the object known, in this case? Answer: There is no object of knowledge, distinct from the knowledge itself.] _Sokr._--I cannot tell you whether I admit it or not, until I have investigated. You address me as if I professed to know the subject: but it is because I do not know, that I examine, in conjunction with you, each successive answer.[13] If temperance consists in knowing, it must be a knowledge of something. _Krit._--It is so: it is knowledge of a man's self. _Sokr._--What good does this knowledge procure for us? as medical knowledge procures for us health--architectural knowledge, buildings, &c.? _Krit._--It has no object positive result of analogous character: but neither have arithmetic nor geometry. _Sokr._--True, but in arithmetic and geometry, we can at least indicate a something known, distinct from the knowledge. Number and proportion are distinct from arithmetic, the science which takes cognizance of them. Now what is that, of which temperance is the knowledge,--distinct from temperance itself? _Krit._--It is on this very point that temperance differs from all the other cognitions. Each of the others is knowledge of something different from itself, but not knowledge of itself: while temperance is knowledge of all the other sciences and of itself also.[14] _Sokr._--If this be so, it will of course be a knowledge of ignorance, as well as a knowledge of knowledge? _Krit._--Certainly. [Footnote 13: Plato, Charm. 165 C.] [Footnote 14: Plato, Charm. 166 C. [Greek: ai( me\n a)/llai pa=sai a)/llou ei)si\n e)pistê=mai, e(autô=n d' ou)/; ê( de\ mo/nê tô=n te a)/llôn e)pistêmô=n e)pistê/mê e)sti\ kai\ au)tê\ e(autê=s.] So also 166 E.] [Side-note: Sokrates doubts the possibility of any knowledge, without a given _cognitum_ as its object. Analogies to prove that knowledge of knowledge is impossible.]