<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_doctrine_of_recollection" target=_BLank title="The Platonic doctrine of recollection is the idea that we are born possessing all knowledge and our realization of that knowledge is contingent on our discovery of it. Whether the doctrine should be taken literally or not is a subject of debate.
The soul is trapped in the body. The soul once lived in Reality, but got trapped in the body. It once knew everything, but forgot it. The goal of Recollection is to get back to true Knowledge. To do this, one must overcome the body.
This doctrine implies that nothing is ever learned, it is simply recalled or remembered.
The idea is found in Meno and Phaedo.”>
Plato’s doctrine of recollection, however, addresses such criticism by saying that souls are born with the concepts of the forms, and just have to be reminded of those concepts from back before birth, when the souls were in close contact with the forms in the Platonic heaven. Plato is thus known as one of the very first rationalists, believing as he did that humans are born with a fund of a priori knowledge, to which they have access through a process of reason or intellection — a process that critics find to be rather mysterious
Dialogos of Eide 