Passages may be produced from Plato's writings to support both these views: that of Schleiermacher, as well as that of Steinhart. In Timæus, p. 51 E, the like infallibility is postulated for [Greek: Nou=s] (which there represents [Greek: E)pistê/mê]) as contrasted with [Greek: do/xa]. But I think that Steinhart ascribes to the Theætêtus more than can fairly be discovered in it. That dialogue is purely negative. It declares that [Greek: e)pistê/mê] is _not_ [Greek: ai)/sthêsis]. It then attempts to go a step farther towards the affirmative, by declaring also that [Greek: e)pistê/mê] is a mental process of computation, respecting the impressions of [Greek: ai)/sthêsis]--that it is [Greek: to\ sullogi/zesthai], which is equivalent to [Greek: to\ doxa/zein]: compare Phædrus, 249 B. But this affirmative attempt breaks down: for Sokrates cannot explain what [Greek: to\ doxa/zein] is, nor how [Greek: to\ doxa/zein pseudê=] is possible; in fact he says (p. 200 B) that this cannot be explained until we know what [Greek: e)pistê/mê] is. The entire result of the dialogue is negative, as the closing words proclaim emphatically. On this point many of the commentators agree--Ast, Socher, Stallbaum, Ueberweg, Zeller, &c. Whether it be true, as Schleiermacher, with several others, thinks (Einl. pp. 184-185), that Plato intends to attack Aristippus in the first part of the dialogue, and Antisthenes in the latter part, we have no means of determining.] This at least is the meaning which Plato assigns to the two words corresponding to Cognition and to Opinion, in the present dialogue, and often elsewhere. But he also frequently employs the word Cognition in a lower and more general signification, not restricted, as it is here, to the highest philosophical reach, with infallibility--but comprehending much of what is here treated only as _opinion_. Thus, for example, he often alludes to the various professional men as possessing _Cognition_, each in his respective department: the general, the physician, the gymnast, the steersman, the husbandman, &c.[102] But he certainly does not mean, that each of them has attained what he calls real essence and philosophical truths--or that any of them are infallible. [Footnote 102: Compare Plato, Sophistes, pp. 232 E, 233 A.] [Side-note: Plato did not recognise Verification from experience, or from facts of sense, as either necessary or possible.]