1. This is the second time we’ve met this point and it will recur in what follows. The assumption that we already know more than we realize is implicit in the Socratic technique of questioning, which Ischomachus here employs to some extent: the questioning is designed to bring latent knowledge out of the answerer. Plato is the master at portraying this technique, and provides speculative back-up for it in his famour Theory of Recollection: all so-called learnig is recollection of knowledge previously acquired, and ultimately acquired before birth (see, for example, Mano, 81a-86b, Phoedo, 72e-78b). Here, however, the issue is not pre-natal knowledge, but what one has seen and assessed by common sense, but forgotten.