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+*********The Project Gutenberg Etext of Meno, by Plato*********
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+Meno
+
+by Plato
+
+Translated by Benjamin Jowett
+
+February, 1999  [Etext #1643]
+
+
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+
+MENO
+
+by Plato
+
+
+
+
+Translated by Benjamin Jowett
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+This Dialogue begins abruptly with a question of Meno, who asks, 'whether
+virtue can be taught.'  Socrates replies that he does not as yet know what
+virtue is, and has never known anyone who did.  'Then he cannot have met
+Gorgias when he was at Athens.'  Yes, Socrates had met him, but he has a
+bad memory, and has forgotten what Gorgias said.  Will Meno tell him his
+own notion, which is probably not very different from that of Gorgias?  'O
+yes--nothing easier:  there is the virtue of a man, of a woman, of an old
+man, and of a child; there is a virtue of every age and state of life, all
+of which may be easily described.'
+
+Socrates reminds Meno that this is only an enumeration of the virtues and
+not a definition of the notion which is common to them all.  In a second
+attempt Meno defines virtue to be 'the power of command.'  But to this,
+again, exceptions are taken.  For there must be a virtue of those who obey,
+as well as of those who command; and the power of command must be justly or
+not unjustly exercised.  Meno is very ready to admit that justice is
+virtue:  'Would you say virtue or a virtue, for there are other virtues,
+such as courage, temperance, and the like; just as round is a figure, and
+black and white are colours, and yet there are other figures and other
+colours.  Let Meno take the examples of figure and colour, and try to
+define them.'  Meno confesses his inability, and after a process of
+interrogation, in which Socrates explains to him the nature of a 'simile in
+multis,' Socrates himself defines figure as 'the accompaniment of colour.' 
+But some one may object that he does not know the meaning of the word
+'colour;' and if he is a candid friend, and not a mere disputant, Socrates
+is willing to furnish him with a simpler and more philosophical definition,
+into which no disputed word is allowed to intrude:  'Figure is the limit of
+form.'  Meno imperiously insists that he must still have a definition of
+colour.  Some raillery follows; and at length Socrates is induced to reply,
+'that colour is the effluence of form, sensible, and in due proportion to
+the sight.'  This definition is exactly suited to the taste of Meno, who
+welcomes the familiar language of Gorgias and Empedocles.  Socrates is of
+opinion that the more abstract or dialectical definition of figure is far
+better.
+
+Now that Meno has been made to understand the nature of a general
+definition, he answers in the spirit of a Greek gentleman, and in the words
+of a poet, 'that virtue is to delight in things honourable, and to have the
+power of getting them.'  This is a nearer approximation than he has yet
+made to a complete definition, and, regarded as a piece of proverbial or
+popular morality, is not far from the truth.  But the objection is urged,
+'that the honourable is the good,' and as every one equally desires the
+good, the point of the definition is contained in the words, 'the power of
+getting them.'  'And they must be got justly or with justice.'  The
+definition will then stand thus:  'Virtue is the power of getting good with
+justice.'  But justice is a part of virtue, and therefore virtue is the
+getting of good with a part of virtue.  The definition repeats the word
+defined.
+
+Meno complains that the conversation of Socrates has the effect of a
+torpedo's shock upon him.  When he talks with other persons he has plenty
+to say about virtue; in the presence of Socrates, his thoughts desert him.
+Socrates replies that he is only the cause of perplexity in others, because
+he is himself perplexed.  He proposes to continue the enquiry.  But how,
+asks Meno, can he enquire either into what he knows or into what he does
+not know?  This is a sophistical puzzle, which, as Socrates remarks, saves
+a great deal of trouble to him who accepts it.  But the puzzle has a real
+difficulty latent under it, to which Socrates will endeavour to find a
+reply.  The difficulty is the origin of knowledge:--
+
+He has heard from priests and priestesses, and from the poet Pindar, of an
+immortal soul which is born again and again in successive periods of
+existence, returning into this world when she has paid the penalty of
+ancient crime, and, having wandered over all places of the upper and under
+world, and seen and known all things at one time or other, is by
+association out of one thing capable of recovering all.  For nature is of
+one kindred; and every soul has a seed or germ which may be developed into
+all knowledge.  The existence of this latent knowledge is further proved by
+the interrogation of one of Meno's slaves, who, in the skilful hands of
+Socrates, is made to acknowledge some elementary relations of geometrical
+figures.  The theorem that the square of the diagonal is double the square
+of the side--that famous discovery of primitive mathematics, in honour of
+which the legendary Pythagoras is said to have sacrificed a hecatomb--is
+elicited from him.  The first step in the process of teaching has made him
+conscious of his own ignorance.  He has had the 'torpedo's shock' given
+him, and is the better for the operation.  But whence had the uneducated
+man this knowledge?  He had never learnt geometry in this world; nor was it
+born with him; he must therefore have had it when he was not a man.  And as
+he always either was or was not a man, he must have always had it. 
+(Compare Phaedo.)
+
+After Socrates has given this specimen of the true nature of teaching, the
+original question of the teachableness of virtue is renewed.  Again he
+professes a desire to know 'what virtue is' first.  But he is willing to
+argue the question, as mathematicians say, under an hypothesis.  He will
+assume that if virtue is knowledge, then virtue can be taught.  (This was
+the stage of the argument at which the Protagoras concluded.)
+
+Socrates has no difficulty in showing that virtue is a good, and that
+goods, whether of body or mind, must be under the direction of knowledge. 
+Upon the assumption just made, then, virtue is teachable.  But where are
+the teachers?  There are none to be found.  This is extremely discouraging.
+Virtue is no sooner discovered to be teachable, than the discovery follows
+that it is not taught.  Virtue, therefore, is and is not teachable.
+
+In this dilemma an appeal is made to Anytus, a respectable and well-to-do
+citizen of the old school, and a family friend of Meno, who happens to be
+present.  He is asked 'whether Meno shall go to the Sophists and be
+taught.'  The suggestion throws him into a rage.  'To whom, then, shall
+Meno go?' asks Socrates.  To any Athenian gentleman--to the great Athenian
+statesmen of past times.  Socrates replies here, as elsewhere (Laches,
+Prot.), that Themistocles, Pericles, and other great men, had sons to whom
+they would surely, if they could have done so, have imparted their own
+political wisdom; but no one ever heard that these sons of theirs were
+remarkable for anything except riding and wrestling and similar
+accomplishments.  Anytus is angry at the imputation which is cast on his
+favourite statesmen, and on a class to which he supposes himself to belong;
+he breaks off with a significant hint.  The mention of another opportunity
+of talking with him, and the suggestion that Meno may do the Athenian
+people a service by pacifying him, are evident allusions to the trial of
+Socrates.
+
+Socrates returns to the consideration of the question 'whether virtue is
+teachable,' which was denied on the ground that there are no teachers of
+it:  (for the Sophists are bad teachers, and the rest of the world do not
+profess to teach).  But there is another point which we failed to observe,
+and in which Gorgias has never instructed Meno, nor Prodicus Socrates. 
+This is the nature of right opinion.  For virtue may be under the guidance
+of right opinion as well as of knowledge; and right opinion is for
+practical purposes as good as knowledge, but is incapable of being taught,
+and is also liable, like the images of Daedalus, to 'walk off,' because not
+bound by the tie of the cause.  This is the sort of instinct which is
+possessed by statesmen, who are not wise or knowing persons, but only
+inspired or divine.  The higher virtue, which is identical with knowledge,
+is an ideal only.  If the statesman had this knowledge, and could teach
+what he knew, he would be like Tiresias in the world below,--'he alone has
+wisdom, but the rest flit like shadows.'
+
+This Dialogue is an attempt to answer the question, Can virtue be taught? 
+No one would either ask or answer such a question in modern times.  But in
+the age of Socrates it was only by an effort that the mind could rise to a
+general notion of virtue as distinct from the particular virtues of
+courage, liberality, and the like.  And when a hazy conception of this
+ideal was attained, it was only by a further effort that the question of
+the teachableness of virtue could be resolved.
+
+The answer which is given by Plato is paradoxical enough, and seems rather
+intended to stimulate than to satisfy enquiry.  Virtue is knowledge, and
+therefore virtue can be taught.  But virtue is not taught, and therefore in
+this higher and ideal sense there is no virtue and no knowledge.  The
+teaching of the Sophists is confessedly inadequate, and Meno, who is their
+pupil, is ignorant of the very nature of general terms.  He can only
+produce out of their armoury the sophism, 'that you can neither enquire
+into what you know nor into what you do not know;' to which Socrates
+replies by his theory of reminiscence.
+
+To the doctrine that virtue is knowledge, Plato has been constantly tending
+in the previous Dialogues.  But the new truth is no sooner found than it
+vanishes away.  'If there is knowledge, there must be teachers; and where
+are the teachers?'  There is no knowledge in the higher sense of
+systematic, connected, reasoned knowledge, such as may one day be attained,
+and such as Plato himself seems to see in some far off vision of a single
+science.  And there are no teachers in the higher sense of the word; that
+is to say, no real teachers who will arouse the spirit of enquiry in their
+pupils, and not merely instruct them in rhetoric or impart to them ready-
+made information for a fee of 'one' or of 'fifty drachms.'  Plato is
+desirous of deepening the notion of education, and therefore he asserts the
+paradox that there are no educators.  This paradox, though different in
+form, is not really different from the remark which is often made in modern
+times by those who would depreciate either the methods of education
+commonly employed, or the standard attained--that 'there is no true
+education among us.'
+
+There remains still a possibility which must not be overlooked.  Even if
+there be no true knowledge, as is proved by 'the wretched state of
+education,' there may be right opinion, which is a sort of guessing or
+divination resting on no knowledge of causes, and incommunicable to others. 
+This is the gift which our statesmen have, as is proved by the circumstance
+that they are unable to impart their knowledge to their sons.  Those who
+are possessed of it cannot be said to be men of science or philosophers,
+but they are inspired and divine.
+
+There may be some trace of irony in this curious passage, which forms the
+concluding portion of the Dialogue.  But Plato certainly does not mean to
+intimate that the supernatural or divine is the true basis of human life. 
+To him knowledge, if only attainable in this world, is of all things the
+most divine.  Yet, like other philosophers, he is willing to admit that
+'probability is the guide of life (Butler's Analogy.);' and he is at the
+same time desirous of contrasting the wisdom which governs the world with a
+higher wisdom.  There are many instincts, judgments, and anticipations of
+the human mind which cannot be reduced to rule, and of which the grounds
+cannot always be given in words.  A person may have some skill or latent
+experience which he is able to use himself and is yet unable to teach
+others, because he has no principles, and is incapable of collecting or
+arranging his ideas.  He has practice, but not theory; art, but not
+science.  This is a true fact of psychology, which is recognized by Plato
+in this passage.  But he is far from saying, as some have imagined, that
+inspiration or divine grace is to be regarded as higher than knowledge.  He
+would not have preferred the poet or man of action to the philosopher, or
+the virtue of custom to the virtue based upon ideas.
+
+Also here, as in the Ion and Phaedrus, Plato appears to acknowledge an
+unreasoning element in the higher nature of man.  The philosopher only has
+knowledge, and yet the statesman and the poet are inspired.  There may be a
+sort of irony in regarding in this way the gifts of genius.  But there is
+no reason to suppose that he is deriding them, any more than he is deriding
+the phenomena of love or of enthusiasm in the Symposium, or of oracles in
+the Apology, or of divine intimations when he is speaking of the daemonium
+of Socrates.  He recognizes the lower form of right opinion, as well as the
+higher one of science, in the spirit of one who desires to include in his
+philosophy every aspect of human life; just as he recognizes the existence
+of popular opinion as a fact, and the Sophists as the expression of it.
+
+This Dialogue contains the first intimation of the doctrine of reminiscence
+and of the immortality of the soul.  The proof is very slight, even
+slighter than in the Phaedo and Republic.  Because men had abstract ideas
+in a previous state, they must have always had them, and their souls
+therefore must have always existed.  For they must always have been either
+men or not men.  The fallacy of the latter words is transparent.  And
+Socrates himself appears to be conscious of their weakness; for he adds
+immediately afterwards, 'I have said some things of which I am not
+altogether confident.'  (Compare Phaedo.)  It may be observed, however,
+that the fanciful notion of pre-existence is combined with a true but
+partial view of the origin and unity of knowledge, and of the association
+of ideas.  Knowledge is prior to any particular knowledge, and exists not
+in the previous state of the individual, but of the race.  It is potential,
+not actual, and can only be appropriated by strenuous exertion.
+
+The idealism of Plato is here presented in a less developed form than in
+the Phaedo and Phaedrus.  Nothing is said of the pre-existence of ideas of
+justice, temperance, and the like.  Nor is Socrates positive of anything
+but the duty of enquiry.  The doctrine of reminiscence too is explained
+more in accordance with fact and experience as arising out of the
+affinities of nature (ate tes thuseos oles suggenous ouses).  Modern
+philosophy says that all things in nature are dependent on one another; the
+ancient philosopher had the same truth latent in his mind when he affirmed
+that out of one thing all the rest may be recovered.  The subjective was
+converted by him into an objective; the mental phenomenon of the
+association of ideas (compare Phaedo) became a real chain of existences. 
+The germs of two valuable principles of education may also be gathered from
+the 'words of priests and priestesses:'  (1) that true knowledge is a
+knowledge of causes (compare Aristotle's theory of episteme); and (2) that
+the process of learning consists not in what is brought to the learner, but
+in what is drawn out of him.
+
+Some lesser points of the dialogue may be noted, such as (1) the acute
+observation that Meno prefers the familiar definition, which is embellished
+with poetical language, to the better and truer one; or (2) the shrewd
+reflection, which may admit of an application to modern as well as to
+ancient teachers, that the Sophists having made large fortunes; this must
+surely be a criterion of their powers of teaching, for that no man could
+get a living by shoemaking who was not a good shoemaker; or (3) the remark
+conveyed, almost in a word, that the verbal sceptic is saved the labour of
+thought and enquiry (ouden dei to toiouto zeteseos).  Characteristic also
+of the temper of the Socratic enquiry is, (4) the proposal to discuss the
+teachableness of virtue under an hypothesis, after the manner of the
+mathematicians; and (5) the repetition of the favourite doctrine which
+occurs so frequently in the earlier and more Socratic Dialogues, and gives
+a colour to all of them--that mankind only desire evil through ignorance;
+(6) the experiment of eliciting from the slave-boy the mathematical truth
+which is latent in him, and (7) the remark that he is all the better for
+knowing his ignorance.
+
+The character of Meno, like that of Critias, has no relation to the actual
+circumstances of his life.  Plato is silent about his treachery to the ten
+thousand Greeks, which Xenophon has recorded, as he is also silent about
+the crimes of Critias.  He is a Thessalian Alcibiades, rich and luxurious--
+a spoilt child of fortune, and is described as the hereditary friend of the
+great king.  Like Alcibiades he is inspired with an ardent desire of
+knowledge, and is equally willing to learn of Socrates and of the Sophists. 
+He may be regarded as standing in the same relation to Gorgias as
+Hippocrates in the Protagoras to the other great Sophist.  He is the
+sophisticated youth on whom Socrates tries his cross-examining powers, just
+as in the Charmides, the Lysis, and the Euthydemus, ingenuous boyhood is
+made the subject of a similar experiment.  He is treated by Socrates in a
+half-playful manner suited to his character; at the same time he appears
+not quite to understand the process to which he is being subjected.  For he
+is exhibited as ignorant of the very elements of dialectics, in which the
+Sophists have failed to instruct their disciple.  His definition of virtue
+as 'the power and desire of attaining things honourable,' like the first
+definition of justice in the Republic, is taken from a poet.  His answers
+have a sophistical ring, and at the same time show the sophistical
+incapacity to grasp a general notion.
+
+Anytus is the type of the narrow-minded man of the world, who is indignant
+at innovation, and equally detests the popular teacher and the true
+philosopher.  He seems, like Aristophanes, to regard the new opinions,
+whether of Socrates or the Sophists, as fatal to Athenian greatness.  He is
+of the same class as Callicles in the Gorgias, but of a different variety;
+the immoral and sophistical doctrines of Callicles are not attributed to
+him.  The moderation with which he is described is remarkable, if he be the
+accuser of Socrates, as is apparently indicated by his parting words. 
+Perhaps Plato may have been desirous of showing that the accusation of
+Socrates was not to be attributed to badness or malevolence, but rather to
+a tendency in men's minds.  Or he may have been regardless of the
+historical truth of the characters of his dialogue, as in the case of Meno
+and Critias.  Like Chaerephon (Apol.) the real Anytus was a democrat, and
+had joined Thrasybulus in the conflict with the thirty.
+
+The Protagoras arrived at a sort of hypothetical conclusion, that if
+'virtue is knowledge, it can be taught.'  In the Euthydemus, Socrates
+himself offered an example of the manner in which the true teacher may draw
+out the mind of youth; this was in contrast to the quibbling follies of the
+Sophists.  In the Meno the subject is more developed; the foundations of
+the enquiry are laid deeper, and the nature of knowledge is more distinctly
+explained.  There is a progression by antagonism of two opposite aspects of
+philosophy.  But at the moment when we approach nearest, the truth doubles
+upon us and passes out of our reach.  We seem to find that the ideal of
+knowledge is irreconcilable with experience.  In human life there is indeed
+the profession of knowledge, but right opinion is our actual guide.  There
+is another sort of progress from the general notions of Socrates, who asked
+simply, 'what is friendship?' 'what is temperance?' 'what is courage?' as
+in the Lysis, Charmides, Laches, to the transcendentalism of Plato, who, in
+the second stage of his philosophy, sought to find the nature of knowledge
+in a prior and future state of existence.
+
+The difficulty in framing general notions which has appeared in this and in
+all the previous Dialogues recurs in the Gorgias and Theaetetus as well as
+in the Republic.  In the Gorgias too the statesmen reappear, but in
+stronger opposition to the philosopher.  They are no longer allowed to have
+a divine insight, but, though acknowledged to have been clever men and good
+speakers, are denounced as 'blind leaders of the blind.'  The doctrine of
+the immortality of the soul is also carried further, being made the
+foundation not only of a theory of knowledge, but of a doctrine of rewards
+and punishments.  In the Republic the relation of knowledge to virtue is
+described in a manner more consistent with modern distinctions.  The
+existence of the virtues without the possession of knowledge in the higher
+or philosophical sense is admitted to be possible.  Right opinion is again
+introduced in the Theaetetus as an account of knowledge, but is rejected on
+the ground that it is irrational (as here, because it is not bound by the
+tie of the cause), and also because the conception of false opinion is
+given up as hopeless.  The doctrines of Plato are necessarily different at
+different times of his life, as new distinctions are realized, or new
+stages of thought attained by him.  We are not therefore justified, in
+order to take away the appearance of inconsistency, in attributing to him
+hidden meanings or remote allusions.
+
+There are no external criteria by which we can determine the date of the
+Meno.  There is no reason to suppose that any of the Dialogues of Plato
+were written before the death of Socrates; the Meno, which appears to be
+one of the earliest of them, is proved to have been of a later date by the
+allusion of Anytus.
+
+We cannot argue that Plato was more likely to have written, as he has done,
+of Meno before than after his miserable death; for we have already seen, in
+the examples of Charmides and Critias, that the characters in Plato are
+very far from resembling the same characters in history.  The repulsive
+picture which is given of him in the Anabasis of Xenophon, where he also
+appears as the friend of Aristippus 'and a fair youth having lovers,' has
+no other trait of likeness to the Meno of Plato.
+
+The place of the Meno in the series is doubtfully indicated by internal
+evidence.  The main character of the Dialogue is Socrates; but to the
+'general definitions' of Socrates is added the Platonic doctrine of
+reminiscence.  The problems of virtue and knowledge have been discussed in
+the Lysis, Laches, Charmides, and Protagoras; the puzzle about knowing and
+learning has already appeared in the Euthydemus.  The doctrines of
+immortality and pre-existence are carried further in the Phaedrus and
+Phaedo; the distinction between opinion and knowledge is more fully
+developed in the Theaetetus.  The lessons of Prodicus, whom he facetiously
+calls his master, are still running in the mind of Socrates.  Unlike the
+later Platonic Dialogues, the Meno arrives at no conclusion.  Hence we are
+led to place the Dialogue at some point of time later than the Protagoras,
+and earlier than the Phaedrus and Gorgias.  The place which is assigned to
+it in this work is due mainly to the desire to bring together in a single
+volume all the Dialogues which contain allusions to the trial and death of
+Socrates.
+
+...
+
+ON THE IDEAS OF PLATO.
+
+Plato's doctrine of ideas has attained an imaginary clearness and
+definiteness which is not to be found in his own writings.  The popular
+account of them is partly derived from one or two passages in his Dialogues
+interpreted without regard to their poetical environment.  It is due also
+to the misunderstanding of him by the Aristotelian school; and the
+erroneous notion has been further narrowed and has become fixed by the
+realism of the schoolmen.  This popular view of the Platonic ideas may be
+summed up in some such formula as the following:  'Truth consists not in
+particulars, but in universals, which have a place in the mind of God, or
+in some far-off heaven.  These were revealed to men in a former state of
+existence, and are recovered by reminiscence (anamnesis) or association
+from sensible things.  The sensible things are not realities, but shadows
+only, in relation to the truth.'  These unmeaning propositions are hardly
+suspected to be a caricature of a great theory of knowledge, which Plato in
+various ways and under many figures of speech is seeking to unfold.  Poetry
+has been converted into dogma; and it is not remarked that the Platonic
+ideas are to be found only in about a third of Plato's writings and are not
+confined to him.  The forms which they assume are numerous, and if taken
+literally, inconsistent with one another.  At one time we are in the clouds
+of mythology, at another among the abstractions of mathematics or
+metaphysics; we pass imperceptibly from one to the other.  Reason and fancy
+are mingled in the same passage.  The ideas are sometimes described as
+many, coextensive with the universals of sense and also with the first
+principles of ethics; or again they are absorbed into the single idea of
+good, and subordinated to it.  They are not more certain than facts, but
+they are equally certain (Phaedo).  They are both personal and impersonal.
+They are abstract terms:  they are also the causes of things; and they are
+even transformed into the demons or spirits by whose help God made the
+world.  And the idea of good (Republic) may without violence be converted
+into the Supreme Being, who 'because He was good' created all things
+(Tim.).
+
+It would be a mistake to try and reconcile these differing modes of
+thought.  They are not to be regarded seriously as having a distinct
+meaning.  They are parables, prophecies, myths, symbols, revelations,
+aspirations after an unknown world.  They derive their origin from a deep
+religious and contemplative feeling, and also from an observation of
+curious mental phenomena.  They gather up the elements of the previous
+philosophies, which they put together in a new form.  Their great diversity
+shows the tentative character of early endeavours to think.  They have not
+yet settled down into a single system.  Plato uses them, though he also
+criticises them; he acknowledges that both he and others are always talking
+about them, especially about the Idea of Good; and that they are not
+peculiar to himself (Phaedo; Republic; Soph.).  But in his later writings
+he seems to have laid aside the old forms of them.  As he proceeds he makes
+for himself new modes of expression more akin to the Aristotelian logic.
+
+Yet amid all these varieties and incongruities, there is a common meaning
+or spirit which pervades his writings, both those in which he treats of the
+ideas and those in which he is silent about them.  This is the spirit of
+idealism, which in the history of philosophy has had many names and taken
+many forms, and has in a measure influenced those who seemed to be most
+averse to it.  It has often been charged with inconsistency and
+fancifulness, and yet has had an elevating effect on human nature, and has
+exercised a wonderful charm and interest over a few spirits who have been
+lost in the thought of it.  It has been banished again and again, but has
+always returned.  It has attempted to leave the earth and soar heavenwards,
+but soon has found that only in experience could any solid foundation of
+knowledge be laid.  It has degenerated into pantheism, but has again
+emerged.  No other knowledge has given an equal stimulus to the mind.  It
+is the science of sciences, which are also ideas, and under either aspect
+require to be defined.  They can only be thought of in due proportion when
+conceived in relation to one another.  They are the glasses through which
+the kingdoms of science are seen, but at a distance.  All the greatest
+minds, except when living in an age of reaction against them, have
+unconsciously fallen under their power.
+
+The account of the Platonic ideas in the Meno is the simplest and clearest,
+and we shall best illustrate their nature by giving this first and then
+comparing the manner in which they are described elsewhere, e.g. in the
+Phaedrus, Phaedo, Republic; to which may be added the criticism of them in
+the Parmenides, the personal form which is attributed to them in the
+Timaeus, the logical character which they assume in the Sophist and
+Philebus, and the allusion to them in the Laws.  In the Cratylus they dawn
+upon him with the freshness of a newly-discovered thought.
+
+The Meno goes back to a former state of existence, in which men did and
+suffered good and evil, and received the reward or punishment of them until
+their sin was purged away and they were allowed to return to earth.  This
+is a tradition of the olden time, to which priests and poets bear witness.
+The souls of men returning to earth bring back a latent memory of ideas,
+which were known to them in a former state.  The recollection is awakened
+into life and consciousness by the sight of the things which resemble them
+on earth.  The soul evidently possesses such innate ideas before she has
+had time to acquire them.  This is proved by an experiment tried on one of
+Meno's slaves, from whom Socrates elicits truths of arithmetic and
+geometry, which he had never learned in this world.  He must therefore have
+brought them with him from another.
+
+The notion of a previous state of existence is found in the verses of
+Empedocles and in the fragments of Heracleitus.  It was the natural answer
+to two questions, 'Whence came the soul?  What is the origin of evil?' and
+prevailed far and wide in the east.  It found its way into Hellas probably
+through the medium of Orphic and Pythagorean rites and mysteries.  It was
+easier to think of a former than of a future life, because such a life has
+really existed for the race though not for the individual, and all men come
+into the world, if not 'trailing clouds of glory,' at any rate able to
+enter into the inheritance of the past.  In the Phaedrus, as well as in the
+Meno, it is this former rather than a future life on which Plato is
+disposed to dwell.  There the Gods, and men following in their train, go
+forth to contemplate the heavens, and are borne round in the revolutions of
+them.  There they see the divine forms of justice, temperance, and the
+like, in their unchangeable beauty, but not without an effort more than
+human.  The soul of man is likened to a charioteer and two steeds, one
+mortal, the other immortal.  The charioteer and the mortal steed are in
+fierce conflict; at length the animal principle is finally overpowered,
+though not extinguished, by the combined energies of the passionate and
+rational elements.  This is one of those passages in Plato which, partaking
+both of a philosophical and poetical character, is necessarily indistinct
+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
+recalls another to our minds, and by which in scientific enquiry from any
+part of knowledge we may be led on to infer the whole.  It is also argued
+that ideas, or rather ideals, must be derived from a previous state of
+existence because they are more perfect than the sensible forms of them
+which are given by experience.  But in the Phaedo the doctrine of ideas is
+subordinate to the proof of the immortality of the soul.  'If the soul
+existed in a previous state, then it will exist in a future state, for a
+law of alternation pervades all things.'  And, 'If the ideas exist, then
+the soul exists; if not, not.'  It is to be observed, both in the Meno and
+the Phaedo, that Socrates expresses himself with diffidence.  He speaks in
+the Phaedo of the words with which he has comforted himself and his
+friends, and will not be too confident that the description which he has
+given of the soul and her mansions is exactly true, but he 'ventures to
+think that something of the kind is true.'  And in the Meno, after dwelling
+upon the immortality of the soul, he adds, 'Of some things which I have
+said I am not altogether confident' (compare Apology; Gorgias).  From this
+class of uncertainties he exempts the difference between truth and
+appearance, of which he is absolutely convinced.
+
+In the Republic the ideas are spoken of in two ways, which though not
+contradictory are different.  In the tenth book they are represented as the
+genera or general ideas under which individuals having a common name are
+contained.  For example, there is the bed which the carpenter makes, the
+picture of the bed which is drawn by the painter, the bed existing in
+nature of which God is the author.  Of the latter all visible beds are only
+the shadows or reflections.  This and similar illustrations or explanations
+are put forth, not for their own sake, or as an exposition of Plato's
+theory of ideas, but with a view of showing that poetry and the mimetic
+arts are concerned with an inferior part of the soul and a lower kind of
+knowledge.  On the other hand, in the 6th and 7th books of the Republic we
+reach the highest and most perfect conception, which Plato is able to
+attain, of the nature of knowledge.  The ideas are now finally seen to be
+one as well as many, causes as well as ideas, and to have a unity which is
+the idea of good and the cause of all the rest.  They seem, however, to
+have lost their first aspect of universals under which individuals are
+contained, and to have been converted into forms of another kind, which are
+inconsistently regarded from the one side as images or ideals of justice,
+temperance, holiness and the like; from the other as hypotheses, or
+mathematical truths or principles.
+
+In the Timaeus, which in the series of Plato's works immediately follows
+the Republic, though probably written some time afterwards, no mention
+occurs of the doctrine of ideas.  Geometrical forms and arithmetical ratios
+furnish the laws according to which the world is created.  But though the
+conception of the ideas as genera or species is forgotten or laid aside,
+the distinction of the visible and intellectual is as firmly maintained as
+ever.  The IDEA of good likewise disappears and is superseded by the
+conception of a personal God, who works according to a final cause or
+principle of goodness which he himself is.  No doubt is expressed by Plato,
+either in the Timaeus or in any other dialogue, of the truths which he
+conceives to be the first and highest.  It is not the existence of God or
+the idea of good which he approaches in a tentative or hesitating manner,
+but the investigations of physiology.  These he regards, not seriously, as
+a part of philosophy, but as an innocent recreation (Tim.).
+
+Passing on to the Parmenides, we find in that dialogue not an exposition or
+defence of the doctrine of ideas, but an assault upon them, which is put
+into the mouth of the veteran Parmenides, and might be ascribed to
+Aristotle himself, or to one of his disciples.  The doctrine which is
+assailed takes two or three forms, but fails in any of them to escape the
+dialectical difficulties which are urged against it.  It is admitted that
+there are ideas of all things, but the manner in which individuals partake
+of them, whether of the whole or of the part, and in which they become like
+them, or how ideas can be either within or without the sphere of human
+knowledge, or how the human and divine can have any relation to each other,
+is held to be incapable of explanation.  And yet, if there are no universal
+ideas, what becomes of philosophy?  (Parmenides.)  In the Sophist the
+theory of ideas is spoken of as a doctrine held not by Plato, but by
+another sect of philosophers, called 'the Friends of Ideas,' probably the
+Megarians, who were very distinct from him, if not opposed to him
+(Sophist).  Nor in what may be termed Plato's abridgement of the history of
+philosophy (Soph.), is any mention made such as we find in the first book
+of Aristotle's Metaphysics, of the derivation of such a theory or of any
+part of it from the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, the Heracleiteans, or even
+from Socrates.  In the Philebus, probably one of the latest of the Platonic
+Dialogues, the conception of a personal or semi-personal deity expressed
+under the figure of mind, the king of all, who is also the cause, is
+retained.  The one and many of the Phaedrus and Theaetetus is still working
+in the mind of Plato, and the correlation of ideas, not of 'all with all,'
+but of 'some with some,' is asserted and explained.  But they are spoken of
+in a different manner, and are not supposed to be recovered from a former
+state of existence.  The metaphysical conception of truth passes into a
+psychological one, which is continued in the Laws, and is the final form of
+the Platonic philosophy, so far as can be gathered from his own writings
+(see especially Laws).  In the Laws he harps once more on the old string,
+and returns to general notions:--these he acknowledges to be many, and yet
+he insists that they are also one.  The guardian must be made to recognize
+the truth, for which he has contended long ago in the Protagoras, that the
+virtues are four, but they are also in some sense one (Laws; compare
+Protagoras).
+
+So various, and if regarded on the surface only, inconsistent, are the
+statements of Plato respecting the doctrine of ideas.  If we attempted to
+harmonize or to combine them, we should make out of them, not a system, but
+the caricature of a system.  They are the ever-varying expression of
+Plato's Idealism.  The terms used in them are in their substance and
+general meaning the same, although they seem to be different.  They pass
+from the subject to the object, from earth (diesseits) to heaven (jenseits)
+without regard to the gulf which later theology and philosophy have made
+between them.  They are also intended to supplement or explain each other.
+They relate to a subject of which Plato himself would have said that 'he
+was not confident of the precise form of his own statements, but was strong
+in the belief that something of the kind was true.'  It is the spirit, not
+the letter, in which they agree--the spirit which places the divine above
+the human, the spiritual above the material, the one above the many, the
+mind before the body.
+
+The stream of ancient philosophy in the Alexandrian and Roman times widens
+into a lake or sea, and then disappears underground to reappear after many
+ages in a distant land.  It begins to flow again under new conditions, at
+first confined between high and narrow banks, but finally spreading over
+the continent of Europe.  It is and is not the same with ancient
+philosophy.  There is a great deal in modern philosophy which is inspired
+by ancient.  There is much in ancient philosophy which was 'born out of due
+time; and before men were capable of understanding it.  To the fathers of
+modern philosophy, their own thoughts appeared to be new and original, but
+they carried with them an echo or shadow of the past, coming back by
+recollection from an elder world.  Of this the enquirers of the seventeenth
+century, who to themselves appeared to be working out independently the
+enquiry into all truth, were unconscious.  They stood in a new relation to
+theology and natural philosophy, and for a time maintained towards both an
+attitude of reserve and separation.  Yet the similarities between modern
+and ancient thought are greater far than the differences.  All philosophy,
+even that part of it which is said to be based upon experience, is really
+ideal; and ideas are not only derived from facts, but they are also prior
+to them and extend far beyond them, just as the mind is prior to the
+senses.
+
+Early Greek speculation culminates in the ideas of Plato, or rather in the
+single idea of good.  His followers, and perhaps he himself, having arrived
+at this elevation, instead of going forwards went backwards from philosophy
+to psychology, from ideas to numbers.  But what we perceive to be the real
+meaning of them, an explanation of the nature and origin of knowledge, will
+always continue to be one of the first problems of philosophy.
+
+Plato also left behind him a most potent instrument, the forms of logic--
+arms ready for use, but not yet taken out of their armoury.  They were the
+late birth of the early Greek philosophy, and were the only part of it
+which has had an uninterrupted hold on the mind of Europe.  Philosophies
+come and go; but the detection of fallacies, the framing of definitions,
+the invention of methods still continue to be the main elements of the
+reasoning process.
+
+Modern philosophy, like ancient, begins with very simple conceptions.  It
+is almost wholly a reflection on self.  It might be described as a
+quickening into life of old words and notions latent in the semi-barbarous
+Latin, and putting a new meaning into them.  Unlike ancient philosophy, it
+has been unaffected by impressions derived from outward nature:  it arose
+within the limits of the mind itself.  From the time of Descartes to Hume
+and Kant it has had little or nothing to do with facts of science.  On the
+other hand, the ancient and mediaeval logic retained a continuous influence
+over it, and a form like that of mathematics was easily impressed upon it;
+the principle of ancient philosophy which is most apparent in it is
+scepticism; we must doubt nearly every traditional or received notion, that
+we may hold fast one or two.  The being of God in a personal or impersonal
+form was a mental necessity to the first thinkers of modern times:  from
+this alone all other ideas could be deduced.  There had been an obscure
+presentiment of 'cognito, ergo sum' more than 2000 years previously.  The
+Eleatic notion that being and thought were the same was revived in a new
+form by Descartes.  But now it gave birth to consciousness and self-
+reflection:  it awakened the 'ego' in human nature.  The mind naked and
+abstract has no other certainty but the conviction of its own existence. 
+'I think, therefore I am;' and this thought is God thinking in me, who has
+also communicated to the reason of man his own attributes of thought and
+extension--these are truly imparted to him because God is true (compare
+Republic).  It has been often remarked that Descartes, having begun by
+dismissing all presuppositions, introduces several:  he passes almost at
+once from scepticism to dogmatism.  It is more important for the
+illustration of Plato to observe that he, like Plato, insists that God is
+true and incapable of deception (Republic)--that he proceeds from general
+ideas, that many elements of mathematics may be found in him.  A certain
+influence of mathematics both on the form and substance of their philosophy
+is discernible in both of them.  After making the greatest opposition
+between thought and extension, Descartes, like Plato, supposes them to be
+reunited for a time, not in their own nature but by a special divine act
+(compare Phaedrus), and he also supposes all the parts of the human body to
+meet in the pineal gland, that alone affording a principle of unity in the
+material frame of man.  It is characteristic of the first period of modern
+philosophy, that having begun (like the Presocratics) with a few general
+notions, Descartes first falls absolutely under their influence, and then
+quickly discards them.  At the same time he is less able to observe facts,
+because they are too much magnified by the glasses through which they are
+seen.  The common logic says 'the greater the extension, the less the
+comprehension,' and we may put the same thought in another way and say of
+abstract or general ideas, that the greater the abstraction of them, the
+less are they capable of being applied to particular and concrete natures.
+
+Not very different from Descartes in his relation to ancient philosophy is
+his successor Spinoza, who lived in the following generation.  The system
+of Spinoza is less personal and also less dualistic than that of Descartes.
+In this respect the difference between them is like that between Xenophanes
+and Parmenides.  The teaching of Spinoza might be described generally as
+the Jewish religion reduced to an abstraction and taking the form of the
+Eleatic philosophy.  Like Parmenides, he is overpowered and intoxicated
+with the idea of Being or God.  The greatness of both philosophies consists
+in the immensity of a thought which excludes all other thoughts; their
+weakness is the necessary separation of this thought from actual existence
+and from practical life.  In neither of them is there any clear opposition
+between the inward and outward world.  The substance of Spinoza has two
+attributes, which alone are cognizable by man, thought and extension; these
+are in extreme opposition to one another, and also in inseparable identity. 
+They may be regarded as the two aspects or expressions under which God or
+substance is unfolded to man.  Here a step is made beyond the limits of the
+Eleatic philosophy.  The famous theorem of Spinoza, 'Omnis determinatio est
+negatio,' is already contained in the 'negation is relation' of Plato's
+Sophist.  The grand description of the philosopher in Republic VI, as the
+spectator of all time and all existence, may be paralleled with another
+famous expression of Spinoza, 'Contemplatio rerum sub specie eternitatis.' 
+According to Spinoza finite objects are unreal, for they are conditioned by
+what is alien to them, and by one another.  Human beings are included in
+the number of them.  Hence there is no reality in human action and no place
+for right and wrong.  Individuality is accident.  The boasted freedom of
+the will is only a consciousness of necessity.  Truth, he says, is the
+direction of the reason towards the infinite, in which all things repose;
+and herein lies the secret of man's well-being.  In the exaltation of the
+reason or intellect, in the denial of the voluntariness of evil (Timaeus;
+Laws) Spinoza approaches nearer to Plato than in his conception of an
+infinite substance.  As Socrates said that virtue is knowledge, so Spinoza
+would have maintained that knowledge alone is good, and what contributes to
+knowledge useful.  Both are equally far from any real experience or
+observation of nature.  And the same difficulty is found in both when we
+seek to apply their ideas to life and practice.  There is a gulf fixed
+between the infinite substance and finite objects or individuals of
+Spinoza, just as there is between the ideas of Plato and the world of
+sense.
+
+Removed from Spinoza by less than a generation is the philosopher Leibnitz,
+who after deepening and intensifying the opposition between mind and
+matter, reunites them by his preconcerted harmony (compare again Phaedrus). 
+To him all the particles of matter are living beings which reflect on one
+another, and in the least of them the whole is contained.  Here we catch a
+reminiscence both of the omoiomere, or similar particles of Anaxagoras, and
+of the world-animal of the Timaeus.
+
+In Bacon and Locke we have another development in which the mind of man is
+supposed to receive knowledge by a new method and to work by observation
+and experience.  But we may remark that it is the idea of experience,
+rather than experience itself, with which the mind is filled.  It is a
+symbol of knowledge rather than the reality which is vouchsafed to us.  The
+Organon of Bacon is not much nearer to actual facts than the Organon of
+Aristotle or the Platonic idea of good.  Many of the old rags and ribbons
+which defaced the garment of philosophy have been stripped off, but some of
+them still adhere.  A crude conception of the ideas of Plato survives in
+the 'forms' of Bacon.  And on the other hand, there are many passages of
+Plato in which the importance of the investigation of facts is as much
+insisted upon as by Bacon.  Both are almost equally superior to the
+illusions of language, and are constantly crying out against them, as
+against other idols.
+
+Locke cannot be truly regarded as the author of sensationalism any more
+than of idealism.  His system is based upon experience, but with him
+experience includes reflection as well as sense.  His analysis and
+construction of ideas has no foundation in fact; it is only the dialectic
+of the mind 'talking to herself.'  The philosophy of Berkeley is but the
+transposition of two words.  For objects of sense he would substitute
+sensations.  He imagines himself to have changed the relation of the human
+mind towards God and nature; they remain the same as before, though he has
+drawn the imaginary line by which they are divided at a different point. 
+He has annihilated the outward world, but it instantly reappears governed
+by the same laws and described under the same names.
+
+A like remark applies to David Hume, of whose philosophy the central
+principle is the denial of the relation of cause and effect.  He would
+deprive men of a familiar term which they can ill afford to lose; but he
+seems not to have observed that this alteration is merely verbal and does
+not in any degree affect the nature of things.  Still less did he remark
+that he was arguing from the necessary imperfection of language against the
+most certain facts.  And here, again, we may find a parallel with the
+ancients.  He goes beyond facts in his scepticism, as they did in their
+idealism.  Like the ancient Sophists, he relegates the more important
+principles of ethics to custom and probability.  But crude and unmeaning as
+this philosophy is, it exercised a great influence on his successors, not
+unlike that which Locke exercised upon Berkeley and Berkeley upon Hume
+himself.  All three were both sceptical and ideal in almost equal degrees.
+Neither they nor their predecessors had any true conception of language or
+of the history of philosophy.  Hume's paradox has been forgotten by the
+world, and did not any more than the scepticism of the ancients require to
+be seriously refuted.  Like some other philosophical paradoxes, it would
+have been better left to die out.  It certainly could not be refuted by a
+philosophy such as Kant's, in which, no less than in the previously
+mentioned systems, the history of the human mind and the nature of language
+are almost wholly ignored, and the certainty of objective knowledge is
+transferred to the subject; while absolute truth is reduced to a figment,
+more abstract and narrow than Plato's ideas, of 'thing in itself,' to
+which, if we reason strictly, no predicate can be applied.
+
+The question which Plato has raised respecting the origin and nature of
+ideas belongs to the infancy of philosophy; in modern times it would no
+longer be asked.  Their origin is only their history, so far as we know it;
+there can be no other.  We may trace them in language, in philosophy, in
+mythology, in poetry, but we cannot argue a priori about them.  We may
+attempt to shake them off, but they are always returning, and in every
+sphere of science and human action are tending to go beyond facts.  They
+are thought to be innate, because they have been familiar to us all our
+lives, and we can no longer dismiss them from our mind.  Many of them
+express relations of terms to which nothing exactly or nothing at all in
+rerum natura corresponds.  We are not such free agents in the use of them
+as we sometimes imagine.  Fixed ideas have taken the most complete
+possession of some thinkers who have been most determined to renounce them,
+and have been vehemently affirmed when they could be least explained and
+were incapable of proof.  The world has often been led away by a word to
+which no distinct meaning could be attached.  Abstractions such as
+'authority,' 'equality,' 'utility,' 'liberty,' 'pleasure,' 'experience,'
+'consciousness,' 'chance,' 'substance,' 'matter,' 'atom,' and a heap of
+other metaphysical and theological terms, are the source of quite as much
+error and illusion and have as little relation to actual facts as the ideas
+of Plato.  Few students of theology or philosophy have sufficiently
+reflected how quickly the bloom of a philosophy passes away; or how hard it
+is for one age to understand the writings of another; or how nice a
+judgment is required of those who are seeking to express the philosophy of
+one age in the terms of another.  The 'eternal truths' of which
+metaphysicians speak have hardly ever lasted more than a generation.  In
+our own day schools or systems of philosophy which have once been famous
+have died before the founders of them.  We are still, as in Plato's age,
+groping about for a new method more comprehensive than any of those which
+now prevail; and also more permanent.  And we seem to see at a distance the
+promise of such a method, which can hardly be any other than the method of
+idealized experience, having roots which strike far down into the history
+of philosophy.  It is a method which does not divorce the present from the
+past, or the part from the whole, or the abstract from the concrete, or
+theory from fact, or the divine from the human, or one science from
+another, but labours to connect them.  Along such a road we have proceeded
+a few steps, sufficient, perhaps, to make us reflect on the want of method
+which prevails in our own day.  In another age, all the branches of
+knowledge, whether relating to God or man or nature, will become the
+knowledge of 'the revelation of a single science' (Symp.), and all things,
+like the stars in heaven, will shed their light upon one another.
+
+
+MENO
+
+by
+
+Plato
+
+Translated by Benjamin Jowett
+
+
+PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE:  Meno, Socrates, A Slave of Meno (Boy), Anytus.
+
+
+MENO:  Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or
+by practice; or if neither by teaching nor by practice, then whether it
+comes to man by nature, or in what other way?
+
+SOCRATES:  O Meno, there was a time when the Thessalians were famous among
+the other Hellenes only for their riches and their riding; but now, if I am
+not mistaken, they are equally famous for their wisdom, especially at
+Larisa, which is the native city of your friend Aristippus.  And this is
+Gorgias' doing; for when he came there, the flower of the Aleuadae, among
+them your admirer Aristippus, and the other chiefs of the Thessalians, fell
+in love with his wisdom.  And he has taught you the habit of answering
+questions in a grand and bold style, which becomes those who know, and is
+the style in which he himself answers all comers; and any Hellene who likes
+may ask him anything.  How different is our lot! my dear Meno.  Here at
+Athens there is a dearth of the commodity, and all wisdom seems to have
+emigrated from us to you.  I am certain that if you were to ask any
+Athenian whether virtue was natural or acquired, he would laugh in your
+face, and say:  'Stranger, you have far too good an opinion of me, if you
+think that I can answer your question.  For I literally do not know what
+virtue is, and much less whether it is acquired by teaching or not.'  And I
+myself, Meno, living as I do in this region of poverty, am as poor as the
+rest of the world; and I confess with shame that I know literally nothing
+about virtue; and when I do not know the 'quid' of anything how can I know
+the 'quale'?  How, if I knew nothing at all of Meno, could I tell if he was
+fair, or the opposite of fair; rich and noble, or the reverse of rich and
+noble?  Do you think that I could?
+
+MENO:  No, indeed.  But are you in earnest, Socrates, in saying that you do
+not know what virtue is?  And am I to carry back this report of you to
+Thessaly?
+
+SOCRATES:  Not only that, my dear boy, but you may say further that I have
+never known of any one else who did, in my judgment.
+
+MENO:  Then you have never met Gorgias when he was at Athens?
+
+SOCRATES:  Yes, I have.
+
+MENO:  And did you not think that he knew?
+
+SOCRATES:  I have not a good memory, Meno, and therefore I cannot now tell
+what I thought of him at the time.  And I dare say that he did know, and
+that you know what he said:  please, therefore, to remind me of what he
+said; or, if you would rather, tell me your own view; for I suspect that
+you and he think much alike.
+
+MENO:  Very true.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then as he is not here, never mind him, and do you tell me:  By
+the gods, Meno, be generous, and tell me what you say that virtue is; for I
+shall be truly delighted to find that I have been mistaken, and that you
+and Gorgias do really have this knowledge; although I have been just saying
+that I have never found anybody who had.
+
+MENO:  There will be no difficulty, Socrates, in answering your question. 
+Let us take first the virtue of a man--he should know how to administer the
+state, and in the administration of it to benefit his friends and harm his
+enemies; and he must also be careful not to suffer harm himself.  A woman's
+virtue, if you wish to know about that, may also be easily described:  her
+duty is to order her house, and keep what is indoors, and obey her husband. 
+Every age, every condition of life, young or old, male or female, bond or
+free, has a different virtue:  there are virtues numberless, and no lack of
+definitions of them; for virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each
+of us in all that we do.  And the same may be said of vice, Socrates
+(Compare Arist. Pol.).
+
+SOCRATES:  How fortunate I am, Meno!  When I ask you for one virtue, you
+present me with a swarm of them (Compare Theaet.), which are in your
+keeping.  Suppose that I carry on the figure of the swarm, and ask of you,
+What is the nature of the bee? and you answer that there are many kinds of
+bees, and I reply:  But do bees differ as bees, because there are many and
+different kinds of them; or are they not rather to be distinguished by some
+other quality, as for example beauty, size, or shape?  How would you answer
+me?
+
+MENO:  I should answer that bees do not differ from one another, as bees.
+
+SOCRATES:  And if I went on to say:  That is what I desire to know, Meno;
+tell me what is the quality in which they do not differ, but are all
+alike;--would you be able to answer?
+
+MENO:  I should.
+
+SOCRATES:  And so of the virtues, however many and different they may be,
+they have all a common nature which makes them virtues; and on this he who
+would answer the question, 'What is virtue?' would do well to have his eye
+fixed:  Do you understand?
+
+MENO:  I am beginning to understand; but I do not as yet take hold of the
+question as I could wish.
+
+SOCRATES:  When you say, Meno, that there is one virtue of a man, another
+of a woman, another of a child, and so on, does this apply only to virtue,
+or would you say the same of health, and size, and strength?  Or is the
+nature of health always the same, whether in man or woman?
+
+MENO:  I should say that health is the same, both in man and woman.
+
+SOCRATES:  And is not this true of size and strength?  If a woman is
+strong, she will be strong by reason of the same form and of the same
+strength subsisting in her which there is in the man.  I mean to say that
+strength, as strength, whether of man or woman, is the same.  Is there any
+difference?
+
+MENO:  I think not.
+
+SOCRATES:  And will not virtue, as virtue, be the same, whether in a child
+or in a grown-up person, in a woman or in a man?
+
+MENO:  I cannot help feeling, Socrates, that this case is different from
+the others.
+
+SOCRATES:  But why?  Were you not saying that the virtue of a man was to
+order a state, and the virtue of a woman was to order a house?
+
+MENO:  I did say so.
+
+SOCRATES:  And can either house or state or anything be well ordered
+without temperance and without justice?
+
+MENO:  Certainly not.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then they who order a state or a house temperately or justly
+order them with temperance and justice?
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then both men and women, if they are to be good men and women,
+must have the same virtues of temperance and justice?
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  And can either a young man or an elder one be good, if they are
+intemperate and unjust?
+
+MENO:  They cannot.
+
+SOCRATES:  They must be temperate and just?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then all men are good in the same way, and by participation in
+the same virtues?
+
+MENO:  Such is the inference.
+
+SOCRATES:  And they surely would not have been good in the same way, unless
+their virtue had been the same?
+
+MENO:  They would not.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then now that the sameness of all virtue has been proven, try
+and remember what you and Gorgias say that virtue is.
+
+MENO:  Will you have one definition of them all?
+
+SOCRATES:  That is what I am seeking.
+
+MENO:  If you want to have one definition of them all, I know not what to
+say, but that virtue is the power of governing mankind.
+
+SOCRATES:  And does this definition of virtue include all virtue?  Is
+virtue the same in a child and in a slave, Meno?  Can the child govern his
+father, or the slave his master; and would he who governed be any longer a
+slave?
+
+MENO:  I think not, Socrates.
+
+SOCRATES:  No, indeed; there would be small reason in that.  Yet once more,
+fair friend; according to you, virtue is 'the power of governing;' but do
+you not add 'justly and not unjustly'?
+
+MENO:  Yes, Socrates; I agree there; for justice is virtue.
+
+SOCRATES:  Would you say 'virtue,' Meno, or 'a virtue'?
+
+MENO:  What do you mean?
+
+SOCRATES:  I mean as I might say about anything; that a round, for example,
+is 'a figure' and not simply 'figure,' and I should adopt this mode of
+speaking, because there are other figures.
+
+MENO:  Quite right; and that is just what I am saying about virtue--that
+there are other virtues as well as justice.
+
+SOCRATES:  What are they? tell me the names of them, as I would tell you
+the names of the other figures if you asked me.
+
+MENO:  Courage and temperance and wisdom and magnanimity are virtues; and
+there are many others.
+
+SOCRATES:  Yes, Meno; and again we are in the same case:  in searching
+after one virtue we have found many, though not in the same way as before;
+but we have been unable to find the common virtue which runs through them
+all.
+
+MENO:  Why, Socrates, even now I am not able to follow you in the attempt
+to get at one common notion of virtue as of other things.
+
+SOCRATES:  No wonder; but I will try to get nearer if I can, for you know
+that all things have a common notion.  Suppose now that some one asked you
+the question which I asked before:  Meno, he would say, what is figure? 
+And if you answered 'roundness,' he would reply to you, in my way of
+speaking, by asking whether you would say that roundness is 'figure' or 'a
+figure;' and you would answer 'a figure.'
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  And for this reason--that there are other figures?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And if he proceeded to ask, What other figures are there? you
+would have told him.
+
+MENO:  I should.
+
+SOCRATES:  And if he similarly asked what colour is, and you answered
+whiteness, and the questioner rejoined, Would you say that whiteness is
+colour or a colour? you would reply, A colour, because there are other
+colours as well.
+
+MENO:  I should.
+
+SOCRATES:  And if he had said, Tell me what they are?--you would have told
+him of other colours which are colours just as much as whiteness.
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And suppose that he were to pursue the matter in my way, he
+would say:  Ever and anon we are landed in particulars, but this is not
+what I want; tell me then, since you call them by a common name, and say
+that they are all figures, even when opposed to one another, what is that
+common nature which you designate as figure--which contains straight as
+well as round, and is no more one than the other--that would be your mode
+of speaking?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And in speaking thus, you do not mean to say that the round is
+round any more than straight, or the straight any more straight than round?
+
+MENO:  Certainly not.
+
+SOCRATES:  You only assert that the round figure is not more a figure than
+the straight, or the straight than the round?
+
+MENO:  Very true.
+
+SOCRATES:  To what then do we give the name of figure?  Try and answer. 
+Suppose that when a person asked you this question either about figure or
+colour, you were to reply, Man, I do not understand what you want, or know
+what you are saying; he would look rather astonished and say:  Do you not
+understand that I am looking for the 'simile in multis'?  And then he might
+put the question in another form:  Meno, he might say, what is that 'simile
+in multis' which you call figure, and which includes not only round and
+straight figures, but all?  Could you not answer that question, Meno?  I
+wish that you would try; the attempt will be good practice with a view to
+the answer about virtue.
+
+MENO:  I would rather that you should answer, Socrates.
+
+SOCRATES:  Shall I indulge you?
+
+MENO:  By all means.
+
+SOCRATES:  And then you will tell me about virtue?
+
+MENO:  I will.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then I must do my best, for there is a prize to be won.
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  Well, I will try and explain to you what figure is.  What do you
+say to this answer?--Figure is the only thing which always follows colour. 
+Will you be satisfied with it, as I am sure that I should be, if you would
+let me have a similar definition of virtue?
+
+MENO:  But, Socrates, it is such a simple answer.
+
+SOCRATES:  Why simple?
+
+MENO:  Because, according to you, figure is that which always follows
+colour.
+
+(SOCRATES:  Granted.)
+
+MENO:  But if a person were to say that he does not know what colour is,
+any more than what figure is--what sort of answer would you have given him?
+
+SOCRATES:  I should have told him the truth.  And if he were a philosopher
+of the eristic and antagonistic sort, I should say to him:  You have my
+answer, and if I am wrong, your business is to take up the argument and
+refute me.  But if we were friends, and were talking as you and I are now,
+I should reply in a milder strain and more in the dialectician's vein; that
+is to say, I should not only speak the truth, but I should make use of
+premisses which the person interrogated would be willing to admit.  And
+this is the way in which I shall endeavour to approach you.  You will
+acknowledge, will you not, that there is such a thing as an end, or
+termination, or extremity?--all which words I use in the same sense,
+although I am aware that Prodicus might draw distinctions about them:  but
+still you, I am sure, would speak of a thing as ended or terminated--that
+is all which I am saying--not anything very difficult.
+
+MENO:  Yes, I should; and I believe that I understand your meaning.
+
+SOCRATES:  And you would speak of a surface and also of a solid, as for
+example in geometry.
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  Well then, you are now in a condition to understand my
+definition of figure.  I define figure to be that in which the solid ends;
+or, more concisely, the limit of solid.
+
+MENO:  And now, Socrates, what is colour?
+
+SOCRATES:  You are outrageous, Meno, in thus plaguing a poor old man to
+give you an answer, when you will not take the trouble of remembering what
+is Gorgias' definition of virtue.
+
+MENO:  When you have told me what I ask, I will tell you, Socrates.
+
+SOCRATES:  A man who was blindfolded has only to hear you talking, and he
+would know that you are a fair creature and have still many lovers.
+
+MENO:  Why do you think so?
+
+SOCRATES:  Why, because you always speak in imperatives:  like all beauties
+when they are in their prime, you are tyrannical; and also, as I suspect,
+you have found out that I have weakness for the fair, and therefore to
+humour you I must answer.
+
+MENO:  Please do.
+
+SOCRATES:  Would you like me to answer you after the manner of Gorgias,
+which is familiar to you?
+
+MENO:  I should like nothing better.
+
+SOCRATES:  Do not he and you and Empedocles say that there are certain
+effluences of existence?
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  And passages into which and through which the effluences pass?
+
+MENO:  Exactly.
+
+SOCRATES:  And some of the effluences fit into the passages, and some of
+them are too small or too large?
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  And there is such a thing as sight?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And now, as Pindar says, 'read my meaning:'--colour is an
+effluence of form, commensurate with sight, and palpable to sense.
+
+MENO:  That, Socrates, appears to me to be an admirable answer.
+
+SOCRATES:  Why, yes, because it happens to be one which you have been in
+the habit of hearing:  and your wit will have discovered, I suspect, that
+you may explain in the same way the nature of sound and smell, and of many
+other similar phenomena.
+
+MENO:  Quite true.
+
+SOCRATES:  The answer, Meno, was in the orthodox solemn vein, and therefore
+was more acceptable to you than the other answer about figure.
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And yet, O son of Alexidemus, I cannot help thinking that the
+other was the better; and I am sure that you would be of the same opinion,
+if you would only stay and be initiated, and were not compelled, as you
+said yesterday, to go away before the mysteries.
+
+MENO:  But I will stay, Socrates, if you will give me many such answers.
+
+SOCRATES:  Well then, for my own sake as well as for yours, I will do my
+very best; but I am afraid that I shall not be able to give you very many
+as good:  and now, in your turn, you are to fulfil your promise, and tell
+me what virtue is in the universal; and do not make a singular into a
+plural, as the facetious say of those who break a thing, but deliver virtue
+to me whole and sound, and not broken into a number of pieces:  I have
+given you the pattern.
+
+MENO:  Well then, Socrates, virtue, as I take it, is when he, who desires
+the honourable, is able to provide it for himself; so the poet says, and I
+say too--
+
+'Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the power of attaining
+them.'
+
+SOCRATES:  And does he who desires the honourable also desire the good?
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then are there some who desire the evil and others who desire
+the good?  Do not all men, my dear sir, desire good?
+
+MENO:  I think not.
+
+SOCRATES:  There are some who desire evil?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  Do you mean that they think the evils which they desire, to be
+good; or do they know that they are evil and yet desire them?
+
+MENO:  Both, I think.
+
+SOCRATES:  And do you really imagine, Meno, that a man knows evils to be
+evils and desires them notwithstanding?
+
+MENO:  Certainly I do.
+
+SOCRATES:  And desire is of possession?
+
+MENO:  Yes, of possession.
+
+SOCRATES:  And does he think that the evils will do good to him who
+possesses them, or does he know that they will do him harm?
+
+MENO:  There are some who think that the evils will do them good, and
+others who know that they will do them harm.
+
+SOCRATES:  And, in your opinion, do those who think that they will do them
+good know that they are evils?
+
+MENO:  Certainly not.
+
+SOCRATES:  Is it not obvious that those who are ignorant of their nature do
+not desire them; but they desire what they suppose to be goods although
+they are really evils; and if they are mistaken and suppose the evils to be
+goods they really desire goods?
+
+MENO:  Yes, in that case.
+
+SOCRATES:  Well, and do those who, as you say, desire evils, and think that
+evils are hurtful to the possessor of them, know that they will be hurt by
+them?
+
+MENO:  They must know it.
+
+SOCRATES:  And must they not suppose that those who are hurt are miserable
+in proportion to the hurt which is inflicted upon them?
+
+MENO:  How can it be otherwise?
+
+SOCRATES:  But are not the miserable ill-fated?
+
+MENO:  Yes, indeed.
+
+SOCRATES:  And does any one desire to be miserable and ill-fated?
+
+MENO:  I should say not, Socrates.
+
+SOCRATES:  But if there is no one who desires to be miserable, there is no
+one, Meno, who desires evil; for what is misery but the desire and
+possession of evil?
+
+MENO:  That appears to be the truth, Socrates, and I admit that nobody
+desires evil.
+
+SOCRATES:  And yet, were you not saying just now that virtue is the desire
+and power of attaining good?
+
+MENO:  Yes, I did say so.
+
+SOCRATES:  But if this be affirmed, then the desire of good is common to
+all, and one man is no better than another in that respect?
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  And if one man is not better than another in desiring good, he
+must be better in the power of attaining it?
+
+MENO:  Exactly.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then, according to your definition, virtue would appear to be
+the power of attaining good?
+
+MENO:  I entirely approve, Socrates, of the manner in which you now view
+this matter.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then let us see whether what you say is true from another point
+of view; for very likely you may be right:--You affirm virtue to be the
+power of attaining goods?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And the goods which you mean are such as health and wealth and
+the possession of gold and silver, and having office and honour in the
+state--those are what you would call goods?
+
+MENO:  Yes, I should include all those.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then, according to Meno, who is the hereditary friend of the
+great king, virtue is the power of getting silver and gold; and would you
+add that they must be gained piously, justly, or do you deem this to be of
+no consequence?  And is any mode of acquisition, even if unjust and
+dishonest, equally to be deemed virtue?
+
+MENO:  Not virtue, Socrates, but vice.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then justice or temperance or holiness, or some other part of
+virtue, as would appear, must accompany the acquisition, and without them
+the mere acquisition of good will not be virtue.
+
+MENO:  Why, how can there be virtue without these?
+
+SOCRATES:  And the non-acquisition of gold and silver in a dishonest manner
+for oneself or another, or in other words the want of them, may be equally
+virtue?
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then the acquisition of such goods is no more virtue than the
+non-acquisition and want of them, but whatever is accompanied by justice or
+honesty is virtue, and whatever is devoid of justice is vice.
+
+MENO:  It cannot be otherwise, in my judgment.
+
+SOCRATES:  And were we not saying just now that justice, temperance, and
+the like, were each of them a part of virtue?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And so, Meno, this is the way in which you mock me.
+
+MENO:  Why do you say that, Socrates?
+
+SOCRATES:  Why, because I asked you to deliver virtue into my hands whole
+and unbroken, and I gave you a pattern according to which you were to frame
+your answer; and you have forgotten already, and tell me that virtue is the
+power of attaining good justly, or with justice; and justice you
+acknowledge to be a part of virtue.
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then it follows from your own admissions, that virtue is doing
+what you do with a part of virtue; for justice and the like are said by you
+to be parts of virtue.
+
+MENO:  What of that?
+
+SOCRATES:  What of that!  Why, did not I ask you to tell me the nature of
+virtue as a whole?  And you are very far from telling me this; but declare
+every action to be virtue which is done with a part of virtue; as though
+you had told me and I must already know the whole of virtue, and this too
+when frittered away into little pieces.  And, therefore, my dear Meno, I
+fear that I must begin again and repeat the same question:  What is virtue?
+for otherwise, I can only say, that every action done with a part of virtue
+is virtue; what else is the meaning of saying that every action done with
+justice is virtue?  Ought I not to ask the question over again; for can any
+one who does not know virtue know a part of virtue?
+
+MENO:  No; I do not say that he can.
+
+SOCRATES:  Do you remember how, in the example of figure, we rejected any
+answer given in terms which were as yet unexplained or unadmitted?
+
+MENO:  Yes, Socrates; and we were quite right in doing so.
+
+SOCRATES:  But then, my friend, do not suppose that we can explain to any
+one the nature of virtue as a whole through some unexplained portion of
+virtue, or anything at all in that fashion; we should only have to ask over
+again the old question, What is virtue?  Am I not right?
+
+MENO:  I believe that you are.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then begin again, and answer me, What, according to you and your
+friend Gorgias, is the definition of virtue?
+
+MENO:  O Socrates, I used to be told, before I knew you, that you were
+always doubting yourself and making others doubt; and now you are casting
+your spells over me, and I am simply getting bewitched and enchanted, and
+am at my wits' end.  And if I may venture to make a jest upon you, you seem
+to me both in your appearance and in your power over others to be very like
+the flat torpedo fish, who torpifies those who come near him and touch him,
+as you have now torpified me, I think.  For my soul and my tongue are
+really torpid, and I do not know how to answer you; and though I have been
+delivered of an infinite variety of speeches about virtue before now, and
+to many persons--and very good ones they were, as I thought--at this moment
+I cannot even say what virtue is.  And I think that you are very wise in
+not voyaging and going away from home, for if you did in other places as
+you do in Athens, you would be cast into prison as a magician.
+
+SOCRATES:  You are a rogue, Meno, and had all but caught me.
+
+MENO:  What do you mean, Socrates?
+
+SOCRATES:  I can tell why you made a simile about me.
+
+MENO:  Why?
+
+SOCRATES:  In order that I might make another simile about you.  For I know
+that all pretty young gentlemen like to have pretty similes made about
+them--as well they may--but I shall not return the compliment.  As to my
+being a torpedo, if the torpedo is torpid as well as the cause of torpidity
+in others, then indeed I am a torpedo, but not otherwise; for I perplex
+others, not because I am clear, but because I am utterly perplexed myself. 
+And now I know not what virtue is, and you seem to be in the same case,
+although you did once perhaps know before you touched me.  However, I have
+no objection to join with you in the enquiry.
+
+MENO:  And how will you enquire, Socrates, into that which you do not know? 
+What will you put forth as the subject of enquiry?  And if you find what
+you want, how will you ever know that this is the thing which you did not
+know?
+
+SOCRATES:  I know, Meno, what you mean; but just see what a tiresome
+dispute you are introducing.  You argue that a man cannot enquire either
+about that which he knows, or about that which he does not know; for if he
+knows, he has no need to enquire; and if not, he cannot; for he does not
+know the very subject about which he is to enquire (Compare Aristot. Post.
+Anal.).
+
+MENO:  Well, Socrates, and is not the argument sound?
+
+SOCRATES:  I think not.
+
+MENO:  Why not?
+
+SOCRATES:  I will tell you why:  I have heard from certain wise men and
+women who spoke of things divine that--
+
+MENO:  What did they say?
+
+SOCRATES:  They spoke of a glorious truth, as I conceive.
+
+MENO:  What was it? and who were they?
+
+SOCRATES:  Some of them were priests and priestesses, who had studied how
+they might be able to give a reason of their profession:  there have been
+poets also, who spoke of these things by inspiration, like Pindar, and many
+others who were inspired.  And they say--mark, now, and see whether their
+words are true--they say that the soul of man is immortal, and at one time
+has an end, which is termed dying, and at another time is born again, but
+is never destroyed.  And the moral is, that a man ought to live always in
+perfect holiness.  'For in the ninth year Persephone sends the souls of
+those from whom she has received the penalty of ancient crime back again
+from beneath into the light of the sun above, and these are they who become
+noble kings and mighty men and great in wisdom and are called saintly
+heroes in after ages.'  The soul, then, as being immortal, and having been
+born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in
+this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no
+wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever
+knew about virtue, and about everything; for as all nature is akin, and the
+soul has learned all things; there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as
+men say learning, out of a single recollection all the rest, if a man is
+strenuous and does not faint; for all enquiry and all learning is but
+recollection.  And therefore we ought not to listen to this sophistical
+argument about the impossibility of enquiry:  for it will make us idle; and
+is sweet only to the sluggard; but the other saying will make us active and
+inquisitive.  In that confiding, I will gladly enquire with you into the
+nature of virtue.
+
+MENO:  Yes, Socrates; but what do you mean by saying that we do not learn,
+and that what we call learning is only a process of recollection?  Can you
+teach me how this is?
+
+SOCRATES:  I told you, Meno, just now that you were a rogue, and now you
+ask whether I can teach you, when I am saying that there is no teaching,
+but only recollection; and thus you imagine that you will involve me in a
+contradiction.
+
+MENO:  Indeed, Socrates, I protest that I had no such intention.  I only
+asked the question from habit; but if you can prove to me that what you say
+is true, I wish that you would.
+
+SOCRATES:  It will be no easy matter, but I will try to please you to the
+utmost of my power.  Suppose that you call one of your numerous attendants,
+that I may demonstrate on him.
+
+MENO:  Certainly.  Come hither, boy.
+
+SOCRATES:  He is Greek, and speaks Greek, does he not?
+
+MENO:  Yes, indeed; he was born in the house.
+
+SOCRATES:  Attend now to the questions which I ask him, and observe whether
+he learns of me or only remembers.
+
+MENO:  I will.
+
+SOCRATES:  Tell me, boy, do you know that a figure like this is a square?
+
+BOY:  I do.
+
+SOCRATES:  And you know that a square figure has these four lines equal?
+
+BOY:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  And these lines which I have drawn through the middle of the
+square are also equal?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  A square may be of any size?
+
+BOY:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  And if one side of the figure be of two feet, and the other side
+be of two feet, how much will the whole be?  Let me explain:  if in one
+direction the space was of two feet, and in the other direction of one
+foot, the whole would be of two feet taken once?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  But since this side is also of two feet, there are twice two
+feet?
+
+BOY:  There are.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then the square is of twice two feet?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And how many are twice two feet? count and tell me.
+
+BOY:  Four, Socrates.
+
+SOCRATES:  And might there not be another square twice as large as this,
+and having like this the lines equal?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And of how many feet will that be?
+
+BOY:  Of eight feet.
+
+SOCRATES:  And now try and tell me the length of the line which forms the
+side of that double square:  this is two feet--what will that be?
+
+BOY:  Clearly, Socrates, it will be double.
+
+SOCRATES:  Do you observe, Meno, that I am not teaching the boy anything,
+but only asking him questions; and now he fancies that he knows how long a
+line is necessary in order to produce a figure of eight square feet; does
+he not?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And does he really know?
+
+MENO:  Certainly not.
+
+SOCRATES:  He only guesses that because the square is double, the line is
+double.
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  Observe him while he recalls the steps in regular order.  (To
+the Boy:)  Tell me, boy, do you assert that a double space comes from a
+double line?  Remember that I am not speaking of an oblong, but of a figure
+equal every way, and twice the size of this--that is to say of eight feet;
+and I want to know whether you still say that a double square comes from
+double line?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  But does not this line become doubled if we add another such
+line here?
+
+BOY:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  And four such lines will make a space containing eight feet?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  Let us describe such a figure:  Would you not say that this is
+the figure of eight feet?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And are there not these four divisions in the figure, each of
+which is equal to the figure of four feet?
+
+BOY:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  And is not that four times four?
+
+BOY:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  And four times is not double?
+
+BOY:  No, indeed.
+
+SOCRATES:  But how much?
+
+BOY:  Four times as much.
+
+SOCRATES:  Therefore the double line, boy, has given a space, not twice,
+but four times as much.
+
+BOY:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  Four times four are sixteen--are they not?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  What line would give you a space of eight feet, as this gives
+one of sixteen feet;--do you see?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And the space of four feet is made from this half line?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  Good; and is not a space of eight feet twice the size of this,
+and half the size of the other?
+
+BOY:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  Such a space, then, will be made out of a line greater than this
+one, and less than that one?
+
+BOY:  Yes; I think so.
+
+SOCRATES:  Very good; I like to hear you say what you think.  And now tell
+me, is not this a line of two feet and that of four?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then the line which forms the side of eight feet ought to be
+more than this line of two feet, and less than the other of four feet?
+
+BOY:  It ought.
+
+SOCRATES:  Try and see if you can tell me how much it will be.
+
+BOY:  Three feet.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then if we add a half to this line of two, that will be the line
+of three.  Here are two and there is one; and on the other side, here are
+two also and there is one:  and that makes the figure of which you speak?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  But if there are three feet this way and three feet that way,
+the whole space will be three times three feet?
+
+BOY:  That is evident.
+
+SOCRATES:  And how much are three times three feet?
+
+BOY:  Nine.
+
+SOCRATES:  And how much is the double of four?
+
+BOY:  Eight.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then the figure of eight is not made out of a line of three?
+
+BOY:  No.
+
+SOCRATES:  But from what line?--tell me exactly; and if you would rather
+not reckon, try and show me the line.
+
+BOY:  Indeed, Socrates, I do not know.
+
+SOCRATES:  Do you see, Meno, what advances he has made in his power of
+recollection?  He did not know at first, and he does not know now, what is
+the side of a figure of eight feet:  but then he thought that he knew, and
+answered confidently as if he knew, and had no difficulty; now he has a
+difficulty, and neither knows nor fancies that he knows.
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  Is he not better off in knowing his ignorance?
+
+MENO:  I think that he is.
+
+SOCRATES:  If we have made him doubt, and given him the 'torpedo's shock,'
+have we done him any harm?
+
+MENO:  I think not.
+
+SOCRATES:  We have certainly, as would seem, assisted him in some degree to
+the discovery of the truth; and now he will wish to remedy his ignorance,
+but then he would have been ready to tell all the world again and again
+that the double space should have a double side.
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  But do you suppose that he would ever have enquired into or
+learned what he fancied that he knew, though he was really ignorant of it,
+until he had fallen into perplexity under the idea that he did not know,
+and had desired to know?
+
+MENO:  I think not, Socrates.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then he was the better for the torpedo's touch?
+
+MENO:  I think so.
+
+SOCRATES:  Mark now the farther development.  I shall only ask him, and not
+teach him, and he shall share the enquiry with me:  and do you watch and
+see if you find me telling or explaining anything to him, instead of
+eliciting his opinion.  Tell me, boy, is not this a square of four feet
+which I have drawn?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And now I add another square equal to the former one?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And a third, which is equal to either of them?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  Suppose that we fill up the vacant corner?
+
+BOY:  Very good.
+
+SOCRATES:  Here, then, there are four equal spaces?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And how many times larger is this space than this other?
+
+BOY:  Four times.
+
+SOCRATES:  But it ought to have been twice only, as you will remember.
+
+BOY:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  And does not this line, reaching from corner to corner, bisect
+each of these spaces?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And are there not here four equal lines which contain this
+space?
+
+BOY:  There are.
+
+SOCRATES:  Look and see how much this space is.
+
+BOY:  I do not understand.
+
+SOCRATES:  Has not each interior line cut off half of the four spaces?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And how many spaces are there in this section?
+
+BOY:  Four.
+
+SOCRATES:  And how many in this?
+
+BOY:  Two.
+
+SOCRATES:  And four is how many times two?
+
+BOY:  Twice.
+
+SOCRATES:  And this space is of how many feet?
+
+BOY:  Of eight feet.
+
+SOCRATES:  And from what line do you get this figure?
+
+BOY:  From this.
+
+SOCRATES:  That is, from the line which extends from corner to corner of
+the figure of four feet?
+
+BOY:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And that is the line which the learned call the diagonal.  And
+if this is the proper name, then you, Meno's slave, are prepared to affirm
+that the double space is the square of the diagonal?
+
+BOY:  Certainly, Socrates.
+
+SOCRATES:  What do you say of him, Meno?  Were not all these answers given
+out of his own head?
+
+MENO:  Yes, they were all his own.
+
+SOCRATES:  And yet, as we were just now saying, he did not know?
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  But still he had in him those notions of his--had he not?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then he who does not know may still have true notions of that
+which he does not know?
+
+MENO:  He has.
+
+SOCRATES:  And at present these notions have just been stirred up in him,
+as in a dream; but if he were frequently asked the same questions, in
+different forms, he would know as well as any one at last?
+
+MENO:  I dare say.
+
+SOCRATES:  Without any one teaching him he will recover his knowledge for
+himself, if he is only asked questions?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And this spontaneous recovery of knowledge in him is
+recollection?
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  And this knowledge which he now has must he not either have
+acquired or always possessed?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  But if he always possessed this knowledge he would always have
+known; or if he has acquired the knowledge he could not have acquired it in
+this life, unless he has been taught geometry; for he may be made to do the
+same with all geometry and every other branch of knowledge.  Now, has any
+one ever taught him all this?  You must know about him, if, as you say, he
+was born and bred in your house.
+
+MENO:  And I am certain that no one ever did teach him.
+
+SOCRATES:  And yet he has the knowledge?
+
+MENO:  The fact, Socrates, is undeniable.
+
+SOCRATES:  But if he did not acquire the knowledge in this life, then he
+must have had and learned it at some other time?
+
+MENO:  Clearly he must.
+
+SOCRATES:  Which must have been the time when he was not a man?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And if there have been always true thoughts in him, both at the
+time when he was and was not a man, which only need to be awakened into
+knowledge by putting questions to him, his soul must have always possessed
+this knowledge, for he always either was or was not a man?
+
+MENO:  Obviously.
+
+SOCRATES:  And if the truth of all things always existed in the soul, then
+the soul is immortal.  Wherefore be of good cheer, and try to recollect
+what you do not know, or rather what you do not remember.
+
+MENO:  I feel, somehow, that I like what you are saying.
+
+SOCRATES:  And I, Meno, like what I am saying.  Some things I have said of
+which I am not altogether confident.  But that we shall be better and
+braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we
+should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing
+and no use in seeking to know what we do not know;--that is a theme upon
+which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.
+
+MENO:  There again, Socrates, your words seem to me excellent.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then, as we are agreed that a man should enquire about that
+which he does not know, shall you and I make an effort to enquire together
+into the nature of virtue?
+
+MENO:  By all means, Socrates.  And yet I would much rather return to my
+original question, Whether in seeking to acquire virtue we should regard it
+as a thing to be taught, or as a gift of nature, or as coming to men in
+some other way?
+
+SOCRATES:  Had I the command of you as well as of myself, Meno, I would not
+have enquired whether virtue is given by instruction or not, until we had
+first ascertained 'what it is.'  But as you think only of controlling me
+who am your slave, and never of controlling yourself,--such being your
+notion of freedom, I must yield to you, for you are irresistible.  And
+therefore I have now to enquire into the qualities of a thing of which I do
+not as yet know the nature.  At any rate, will you condescend a little, and
+allow the question 'Whether virtue is given by instruction, or in any other
+way,' to be argued upon hypothesis?  As the geometrician, when he is asked
+whether a certain triangle is capable being inscribed in a certain circle
+(Or, whether a certain area is capable of being inscribed as a triangle in
+a certain circle.), will reply:  'I cannot tell you as yet; but I will
+offer a hypothesis which may assist us in forming a conclusion:  If the
+figure be such that when you have produced a given side of it (Or, when you
+apply it to the given line, i.e. the diameter of the circle (autou).), the
+given area of the triangle falls short by an area corresponding to the part
+produced (Or, similar to the area so applied.), then one consequence
+follows, and if this is impossible then some other; and therefore I wish to
+assume a hypothesis before I tell you whether this triangle is capable of
+being inscribed in the circle':--that is a geometrical hypothesis.  And we
+too, as we know not the nature and qualities of virtue, must ask, whether
+virtue is or is not taught, under a hypothesis:  as thus, if virtue is of
+such a class of mental goods, will it be taught or not?  Let the first
+hypothesis be that virtue is or is not knowledge,--in that case will it be
+taught or not? or, as we were just now saying, 'remembered'?  For there is
+no use in disputing about the name.  But is virtue taught or not? or
+rather, does not every one see that knowledge alone is taught?
+
+MENO:  I agree.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then if virtue is knowledge, virtue will be taught?
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then now we have made a quick end of this question:  if virtue
+is of such a nature, it will be taught; and if not, not?
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  The next question is, whether virtue is knowledge or of another
+species?
+
+MENO:  Yes, that appears to be the question which comes next in order.
+
+SOCRATES:  Do we not say that virtue is a good?--This is a hypothesis which
+is not set aside.
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  Now, if there be any sort of good which is distinct from
+knowledge, virtue may be that good; but if knowledge embraces all good,
+then we shall be right in thinking that virtue is knowledge?
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  And virtue makes us good?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And if we are good, then we are profitable; for all good things
+are profitable?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then virtue is profitable?
+
+MENO:  That is the only inference.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then now let us see what are the things which severally profit
+us.  Health and strength, and beauty and wealth--these, and the like of
+these, we call profitable?
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  And yet these things may also sometimes do us harm:  would you
+not think so?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And what is the guiding principle which makes them profitable or
+the reverse?  Are they not profitable when they are rightly used, and
+hurtful when they are not rightly used?
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  Next, let us consider the goods of the soul:  they are
+temperance, justice, courage, quickness of apprehension, memory,
+magnanimity, and the like?
+
+MENO:  Surely.
+
+SOCRATES:  And such of these as are not knowledge, but of another sort, are
+sometimes profitable and sometimes hurtful; as, for example, courage
+wanting prudence, which is only a sort of confidence?  When a man has no
+sense he is harmed by courage, but when he has sense he is profited?
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  And the same may be said of temperance and quickness of
+apprehension; whatever things are learned or done with sense are
+profitable, but when done without sense they are hurtful?
+
+MENO:  Very true.
+
+SOCRATES:  And in general, all that the soul attempts or endures, when
+under the guidance of wisdom, ends in happiness; but when she is under the
+guidance of folly, in the opposite?
+
+MENO:  That appears to be true.
+
+SOCRATES:  If then virtue is a quality of the soul, and is admitted to be
+profitable, it must be wisdom or prudence, since none of the things of the
+soul are either profitable or hurtful in themselves, but they are all made
+profitable or hurtful by the addition of wisdom or of folly; and therefore
+if virtue is profitable, virtue must be a sort of wisdom or prudence?
+
+MENO:  I quite agree.
+
+SOCRATES:  And the other goods, such as wealth and the like, of which we
+were just now saying that they are sometimes good and sometimes evil, do
+not they also become profitable or hurtful, accordingly as the soul guides
+and uses them rightly or wrongly; just as the things of the soul herself
+are benefited when under the guidance of wisdom and harmed by folly?
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  And the wise soul guides them rightly, and the foolish soul
+wrongly.
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And is not this universally true of human nature?  All other
+things hang upon the soul, and the things of the soul herself hang upon
+wisdom, if they are to be good; and so wisdom is inferred to be that which
+profits--and virtue, as we say, is profitable?
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  And thus we arrive at the conclusion that virtue is either
+wholly or partly wisdom?
+
+MENO:  I think that what you are saying, Socrates, is very true.
+
+SOCRATES:  But if this is true, then the good are not by nature good?
+
+MENO:  I think not.
+
+SOCRATES:  If they had been, there would assuredly have been discerners of
+characters among us who would have known our future great men; and on their
+showing we should have adopted them, and when we had got them, we should
+have kept them in the citadel out of the way of harm, and set a stamp upon
+them far rather than upon a piece of gold, in order that no one might
+tamper with them; and when they grew up they would have been useful to the
+state?
+
+MENO:  Yes, Socrates, that would have been the right way.
+
+SOCRATES:  But if the good are not by nature good, are they made good by
+instruction?
+
+MENO:  There appears to be no other alternative, Socrates.  On the
+supposition that virtue is knowledge, there can be no doubt that virtue is
+taught.
+
+SOCRATES:  Yes, indeed; but what if the supposition is erroneous?
+
+MENO:  I certainly thought just now that we were right.
+
+SOCRATES:  Yes, Meno; but a principle which has any soundness should stand
+firm not only just now, but always.
+
+MENO:  Well; and why are you so slow of heart to believe that knowledge is
+virtue?
+
+SOCRATES:  I will try and tell you why, Meno.  I do not retract the
+assertion that if virtue is knowledge it may be taught; but I fear that I
+have some reason in doubting whether virtue is knowledge:  for consider now
+and say whether virtue, and not only virtue but anything that is taught,
+must not have teachers and disciples?
+
+MENO:  Surely.
+
+SOCRATES:  And conversely, may not the art of which neither teachers nor
+disciples exist be assumed to be incapable of being taught?
+
+MENO:  True; but do you think that there are no teachers of virtue?
+
+SOCRATES:  I have certainly often enquired whether there were any, and
+taken great pains to find them, and have never succeeded; and many have
+assisted me in the search, and they were the persons whom I thought the
+most likely to know.  Here at the moment when he is wanted we fortunately
+have sitting by us Anytus, the very person of whom we should make enquiry;
+to him then let us repair.  In the first place, he is the son of a wealthy
+and wise father, Anthemion, who acquired his wealth, not by accident or
+gift, like Ismenias the Theban (who has recently made himself as rich as
+Polycrates), but by his own skill and industry, and who is a well-
+conditioned, modest man, not insolent, or overbearing, or annoying;
+moreover, this son of his has received a good education, as the Athenian
+people certainly appear to think, for they choose him to fill the highest
+offices.  And these are the sort of men from whom you are likely to learn
+whether there are any teachers of virtue, and who they are.  Please,
+Anytus, to help me and your friend Meno in answering our question, Who are
+the teachers?  Consider the matter thus:  If we wanted Meno to be a good
+physician, to whom should we send him?  Should we not send him to the
+physicians?
+
+ANYTUS:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  Or if we wanted him to be a good cobbler, should we not send him
+to the cobblers?
+
+ANYTUS:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And so forth?
+
+ANYTUS:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  Let me trouble you with one more question.  When we say that we
+should be right in sending him to the physicians if we wanted him to be a
+physician, do we mean that we should be right in sending him to those who
+profess the art, rather than to those who do not, and to those who demand
+payment for teaching the art, and profess to teach it to any one who will
+come and learn?  And if these were our reasons, should we not be right in
+sending him?
+
+ANYTUS:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And might not the same be said of flute-playing, and of the
+other arts?  Would a man who wanted to make another a flute-player refuse
+to send him to those who profess to teach the art for money, and be
+plaguing other persons to give him instruction, who are not professed
+teachers and who never had a single disciple in that branch of knowledge
+which he wishes him to acquire--would not such conduct be the height of
+folly?
+
+ANYTUS:  Yes, by Zeus, and of ignorance too.
+
+SOCRATES:  Very good.  And now you are in a position to advise with me
+about my friend Meno.  He has been telling me, Anytus, that he desires to
+attain that kind of wisdom and virtue by which men order the state or the
+house, and honour their parents, and know when to receive and when to send
+away citizens and strangers, as a good man should.  Now, to whom should he
+go in order that he may learn this virtue?  Does not the previous argument
+imply clearly that we should send him to those who profess and avouch that
+they are the common teachers of all Hellas, and are ready to impart
+instruction to any one who likes, at a fixed price?
+
+ANYTUS:  Whom do you mean, Socrates?
+
+SOCRATES:  You surely know, do you not, Anytus, that these are the people
+whom mankind call Sophists?
+
+ANYTUS:  By Heracles, Socrates, forbear!  I only hope that no friend or
+kinsman or acquaintance of mine, whether citizen or stranger, will ever be
+so mad as to allow himself to be corrupted by them; for they are a manifest
+pest and corrupting influence to those who have to do with them.
+
+SOCRATES:  What, Anytus?  Of all the people who profess that they know how
+to do men good, do you mean to say that these are the only ones who not
+only do them no good, but positively corrupt those who are entrusted to
+them, and in return for this disservice have the face to demand money? 
+Indeed, I cannot believe you; for I know of a single man, Protagoras, who
+made more out of his craft than the illustrious Pheidias, who created such
+noble works, or any ten other statuaries.  How could that be?  A mender of
+old shoes, or patcher up of clothes, who made the shoes or clothes worse
+than he received them, could not have remained thirty days undetected, and
+would very soon have starved; whereas during more than forty years,
+Protagoras was corrupting all Hellas, and sending his disciples from him
+worse than he received them, and he was never found out.  For, if I am not
+mistaken, he was about seventy years old at his death, forty of which were
+spent in the practice of his profession; and during all that time he had a
+good reputation, which to this day he retains:  and not only Protagoras,
+but many others are well spoken of; some who lived before him, and others
+who are still living.  Now, when you say that they deceived and corrupted
+the youth, are they to be supposed to have corrupted them consciously or
+unconsciously?  Can those who were deemed by many to be the wisest men of
+Hellas have been out of their minds?
+
+ANYTUS:  Out of their minds!  No, Socrates; the young men who gave their
+money to them were out of their minds, and their relations and guardians
+who entrusted their youth to the care of these men were still more out of
+their minds, and most of all, the cities who allowed them to come in, and
+did not drive them out, citizen and stranger alike.
+
+SOCRATES:  Has any of the Sophists wronged you, Anytus?  What makes you so
+angry with them?
+
+ANYTUS:  No, indeed, neither I nor any of my belongings has ever had, nor
+would I suffer them to have, anything to do with them.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then you are entirely unacquainted with them?
+
+ANYTUS:  And I have no wish to be acquainted.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then, my dear friend, how can you know whether a thing is good
+or bad of which you are wholly ignorant?
+
+ANYTUS:  Quite well; I am sure that I know what manner of men these are,
+whether I am acquainted with them or not.
+
+SOCRATES:  You must be a diviner, Anytus, for I really cannot make out,
+judging from your own words, how, if you are not acquainted with them, you
+know about them.  But I am not enquiring of you who are the teachers who
+will corrupt Meno (let them be, if you please, the Sophists); I only ask
+you to tell him who there is in this great city who will teach him how to
+become eminent in the virtues which I was just now describing.  He is the
+friend of your family, and you will oblige him.
+
+ANYTUS:  Why do you not tell him yourself?
+
+SOCRATES:  I have told him whom I supposed to be the teachers of these
+things; but I learn from you that I am utterly at fault, and I dare say
+that you are right.  And now I wish that you, on your part, would tell me
+to whom among the Athenians he should go.  Whom would you name?
+
+ANYTUS:  Why single out individuals?  Any Athenian gentleman, taken at
+random, if he will mind him, will do far more good to him than the
+Sophists.
+
+SOCRATES:  And did those gentlemen grow of themselves; and without having
+been taught by any one, were they nevertheless able to teach others that
+which they had never learned themselves?
+
+ANYTUS:  I imagine that they learned of the previous generation of
+gentlemen.  Have there not been many good men in this city?
+
+SOCRATES:  Yes, certainly, Anytus; and many good statesmen also there
+always have been and there are still, in the city of Athens.  But the
+question is whether they were also good teachers of their own virtue;--not
+whether there are, or have been, good men in this part of the world, but
+whether virtue can be taught, is the question which we have been
+discussing.  Now, do we mean to say that the good men of our own and of
+other times knew how to impart to others that virtue which they had
+themselves; or is virtue a thing incapable of being communicated or
+imparted by one man to another?  That is the question which I and Meno have
+been arguing.  Look at the matter in your own way:  Would you not admit
+that Themistocles was a good man?
+
+ANYTUS:  Certainly; no man better.
+
+SOCRATES:  And must not he then have been a good teacher, if any man ever
+was a good teacher, of his own virtue?
+
+ANYTUS:  Yes certainly,--if he wanted to be so.
+
+SOCRATES:  But would he not have wanted?  He would, at any rate, have
+desired to make his own son a good man and a gentleman; he could not have
+been jealous of him, or have intentionally abstained from imparting to him
+his own virtue.  Did you never hear that he made his son Cleophantus a
+famous horseman; and had him taught to stand upright on horseback and hurl
+a javelin, and to do many other marvellous things; and in anything which
+could be learned from a master he was well trained?  Have you not heard
+from our elders of him?
+
+ANYTUS:  I have.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then no one could say that his son showed any want of capacity?
+
+ANYTUS:  Very likely not.
+
+SOCRATES:  But did any one, old or young, ever say in your hearing that
+Cleophantus, son of Themistocles, was a wise or good man, as his father
+was?
+
+ANYTUS:  I have certainly never heard any one say so.
+
+SOCRATES:  And if virtue could have been taught, would his father
+Themistocles have sought to train him in these minor accomplishments, and
+allowed him who, as you must remember, was his own son, to be no better
+than his neighbours in those qualities in which he himself excelled?
+
+ANYTUS:  Indeed, indeed, I think not.
+
+SOCRATES:  Here was a teacher of virtue whom you admit to be among the best
+men of the past.  Let us take another,--Aristides, the son of Lysimachus: 
+would you not acknowledge that he was a good man?
+
+ANYTUS:  To be sure I should.
+
+SOCRATES:  And did not he train his son Lysimachus better than any other
+Athenian in all that could be done for him by the help of masters?  But
+what has been the result?  Is he a bit better than any other mortal?  He is
+an acquaintance of yours, and you see what he is like.  There is Pericles,
+again, magnificent in his wisdom; and he, as you are aware, had two sons,
+Paralus and Xanthippus.
+
+ANYTUS:  I know.
+
+SOCRATES:  And you know, also, that he taught them to be unrivalled
+horsemen, and had them trained in music and gymnastics and all sorts of
+arts--in these respects they were on a level with the best--and had he no
+wish to make good men of them?  Nay, he must have wished it.  But virtue,
+as I suspect, could not be taught.  And that you may not suppose the
+incompetent teachers to be only the meaner sort of Athenians and few in
+number, remember again that Thucydides had two sons, Melesias and
+Stephanus, whom, besides giving them a good education in other things, he
+trained in wrestling, and they were the best wrestlers in Athens:  one of
+them he committed to the care of Xanthias, and the other of Eudorus, who
+had the reputation of being the most celebrated wrestlers of that day.  Do
+you remember them?
+
+ANYTUS:  I have heard of them.
+
+SOCRATES:  Now, can there be a doubt that Thucydides, whose children were
+taught things for which he had to spend money, would have taught them to be
+good men, which would have cost him nothing, if virtue could have been
+taught?  Will you reply that he was a mean man, and had not many friends
+among the Athenians and allies?  Nay, but he was of a great family, and a
+man of influence at Athens and in all Hellas, and, if virtue could have
+been taught, he would have found out some Athenian or foreigner who would
+have made good men of his sons, if he could not himself spare the time from
+cares of state.  Once more, I suspect, friend Anytus, that virtue is not a
+thing which can be taught?
+
+ANYTUS:  Socrates, I think that you are too ready to speak evil of men: 
+and, if you will take my advice, I would recommend you to be careful. 
+Perhaps there is no city in which it is not easier to do men harm than to
+do them good, and this is certainly the case at Athens, as I believe that
+you know.
+
+SOCRATES:  O Meno, think that Anytus is in a rage.  And he may well be in a
+rage, for he thinks, in the first place, that I am defaming these
+gentlemen; and in the second place, he is of opinion that he is one of them
+himself.  But some day he will know what is the meaning of defamation, and
+if he ever does, he will forgive me.  Meanwhile I will return to you, Meno;
+for I suppose that there are gentlemen in your region too?
+
+MENO:  Certainly there are.
+
+SOCRATES:  And are they willing to teach the young? and do they profess to
+be teachers? and do they agree that virtue is taught?
+
+MENO:  No indeed, Socrates, they are anything but agreed; you may hear them
+saying at one time that virtue can be taught, and then again the reverse.
+
+SOCRATES:  Can we call those teachers who do not acknowledge the
+possibility of their own vocation?
+
+MENO:  I think not, Socrates.
+
+SOCRATES:  And what do you think of these Sophists, who are the only
+professors?  Do they seem to you to be teachers of virtue?
+
+MENO:  I often wonder, Socrates, that Gorgias is never heard promising to
+teach virtue:  and when he hears others promising he only laughs at them;
+but he thinks that men should be taught to speak.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then do you not think that the Sophists are teachers?
+
+MENO:  I cannot tell you, Socrates; like the rest of the world, I am in
+doubt, and sometimes I think that they are teachers and sometimes not.
+
+SOCRATES:  And are you aware that not you only and other politicians have
+doubts whether virtue can be taught or not, but that Theognis the poet says
+the very same thing?
+
+MENO:  Where does he say so?
+
+SOCRATES:  In these elegiac verses (Theog.):
+
+'Eat and drink and sit with the mighty, and make yourself agreeable to
+them; for from the good you will learn what is good, but if you mix with
+the bad you will lose the intelligence which you already have.'
+
+Do you observe that here he seems to imply that virtue can be taught?
+
+MENO:  Clearly.
+
+SOCRATES:  But in some other verses he shifts about and says (Theog.):
+
+'If understanding could be created and put into a man, then they' (who were
+able to perform this feat) 'would have obtained great rewards.'
+
+And again:--
+
+'Never would a bad son have sprung from a good sire, for he would have
+heard the voice of instruction; but not by teaching will you ever make a
+bad man into a good one.'
+
+And this, as you may remark, is a contradiction of the other.
+
+MENO:  Clearly.
+
+SOCRATES:  And is there anything else of which the professors are affirmed
+not only not to be teachers of others, but to be ignorant themselves, and
+bad at the knowledge of that which they are professing to teach? or is
+there anything about which even the acknowledged 'gentlemen' are sometimes
+saying that 'this thing can be taught,' and sometimes the opposite?  Can
+you say that they are teachers in any true sense whose ideas are in such
+confusion?
+
+MENO:  I should say, certainly not.
+
+SOCRATES:  But if neither the Sophists nor the gentlemen are teachers,
+clearly there can be no other teachers?
+
+MENO:  No.
+
+SOCRATES:  And if there are no teachers, neither are there disciples?
+
+MENO:  Agreed.
+
+SOCRATES:  And we have admitted that a thing cannot be taught of which
+there are neither teachers nor disciples?
+
+MENO:  We have.
+
+SOCRATES:  And there are no teachers of virtue to be found anywhere?
+
+MENO:  There are not.
+
+SOCRATES:  And if there are no teachers, neither are there scholars?
+
+MENO:  That, I think, is true.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then virtue cannot be taught?
+
+MENO:  Not if we are right in our view.  But I cannot believe, Socrates,
+that there are no good men:  And if there are, how did they come into
+existence?
+
+SOCRATES:  I am afraid, Meno, that you and I are not good for much, and
+that Gorgias has been as poor an educator of you as Prodicus has been of
+me.  Certainly we shall have to look to ourselves, and try to find some one
+who will help in some way or other to improve us.  This I say, because I
+observe that in the previous discussion none of us remarked that right and
+good action is possible to man under other guidance than that of knowledge
+(episteme);--and indeed if this be denied, there is no seeing how there can
+be any good men at all.
+
+MENO:  How do you mean, Socrates?
+
+SOCRATES:  I mean that good men are necessarily useful or profitable.  Were
+we not right in admitting this?  It must be so.
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And in supposing that they will be useful only if they are true
+guides to us of action--there we were also right?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  But when we said that a man cannot be a good guide unless he
+have knowledge (phrhonesis), this we were wrong.
+
+MENO:  What do you mean by the word 'right'?
+
+SOCRATES:  I will explain.  If a man knew the way to Larisa, or anywhere
+else, and went to the place and led others thither, would he not be a right
+and good guide?
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  And a person who had a right opinion about the way, but had
+never been and did not know, might be a good guide also, might he not?
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  And while he has true opinion about that which the other knows,
+he will be just as good a guide if he thinks the truth, as he who knows the
+truth?
+
+MENO:  Exactly.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then true opinion is as good a guide to correct action as
+knowledge; and that was the point which we omitted in our speculation about
+the nature of virtue, when we said that knowledge only is the guide of
+right action; whereas there is also right opinion.
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then right opinion is not less useful than knowledge?
+
+MENO:  The difference, Socrates, is only that he who has knowledge will
+always be right; but he who has right opinion will sometimes be right, and
+sometimes not.
+
+SOCRATES:  What do you mean?  Can he be wrong who has right opinion, so
+long as he has right opinion?
+
+MENO:  I admit the cogency of your argument, and therefore, Socrates, I
+wonder that knowledge should be preferred to right opinion--or why they
+should ever differ.
+
+SOCRATES:  And shall I explain this wonder to you?
+
+MENO:  Do tell me.
+
+SOCRATES:  You would not wonder if you had ever observed the images of
+Daedalus (Compare Euthyphro); but perhaps you have not got them in your
+country?
+
+MENO:  What have they to do with the question?
+
+SOCRATES:  Because they require to be fastened in order to keep them, and
+if they are not fastened they will play truant and run away.
+
+MENO:  Well, what of that?
+
+SOCRATES:  I mean to say that they are not very valuable possessions if
+they are at liberty, for they will walk off like runaway slaves; but when
+fastened, they are of great value, for they are really beautiful works of
+art.  Now this is an illustration of the nature of true opinions:  while
+they abide with us they are beautiful and fruitful, but they run away out
+of the human soul, and do not remain long, and therefore they are not of
+much value until they are fastened by the tie of the cause; and this
+fastening of them, friend Meno, is recollection, as you and I have agreed
+to call it.  But when they are bound, in the first place, they have the
+nature of knowledge; and, in the second place, they are abiding.  And this
+is why knowledge is more honourable and excellent than true opinion,
+because fastened by a chain.
+
+MENO:  What you are saying, Socrates, seems to be very like the truth.
+
+SOCRATES:  I too speak rather in ignorance; I only conjecture.  And yet
+that knowledge differs from true opinion is no matter of conjecture with
+me.  There are not many things which I profess to know, but this is most
+certainly one of them.
+
+MENO:  Yes, Socrates; and you are quite right in saying so.
+
+SOCRATES:  And am I not also right in saying that true opinion leading the
+way perfects action quite as well as knowledge?
+
+MENO:  There again, Socrates, I think you are right.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then right opinion is not a whit inferior to knowledge, or less
+useful in action; nor is the man who has right opinion inferior to him who
+has knowledge?
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  And surely the good man has been acknowledged by us to be
+useful?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  Seeing then that men become good and useful to states, not only
+because they have knowledge, but because they have right opinion, and that
+neither knowledge nor right opinion is given to man by nature or acquired
+by him--(do you imagine either of them to be given by nature?
+
+MENO:  Not I.)
+
+SOCRATES:  Then if they are not given by nature, neither are the good by
+nature good?
+
+MENO:  Certainly not.
+
+SOCRATES:  And nature being excluded, then came the question whether virtue
+is acquired by teaching?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  If virtue was wisdom (or knowledge), then, as we thought, it was
+taught?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And if it was taught it was wisdom?
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  And if there were teachers, it might be taught; and if there
+were no teachers, not?
+
+MENO:  True.
+
+SOCRATES:  But surely we acknowledged that there were no teachers of
+virtue?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then we acknowledged that it was not taught, and was not wisdom?
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  And yet we admitted that it was a good?
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And the right guide is useful and good?
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  And the only right guides are knowledge and true opinion--these
+are the guides of man; for things which happen by chance are not under the
+guidance of man:  but the guides of man are true opinion and knowledge.
+
+MENO:  I think so too.
+
+SOCRATES:  But if virtue is not taught, neither is virtue knowledge.
+
+MENO:  Clearly not.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then of two good and useful things, one, which is knowledge, has
+been set aside, and cannot be supposed to be our guide in political life.
+
+MENO:  I think not.
+
+SOCRATES:  And therefore not by any wisdom, and not because they were wise,
+did Themistocles and those others of whom Anytus spoke govern states.  This
+was the reason why they were unable to make others like themselves--because
+their virtue was not grounded on knowledge.
+
+MENO:  That is probably true, Socrates.
+
+SOCRATES:  But if not by knowledge, the only alternative which remains is
+that statesmen must have guided states by right opinion, which is in
+politics what divination is in religion; for diviners and also prophets say
+many things truly, but they know not what they say.
+
+MENO:  So I believe.
+
+SOCRATES:  And may we not, Meno, truly call those men 'divine' who, having
+no understanding, yet succeed in many a grand deed and word?
+
+MENO:  Certainly.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then we shall also be right in calling divine those whom we were
+just now speaking of as diviners and prophets, including the whole tribe of
+poets.  Yes, and statesmen above all may be said to be divine and
+illumined, being inspired and possessed of God, in which condition they say
+many grand things, not knowing what they say.
+
+MENO:  Yes.
+
+SOCRATES:  And the women too, Meno, call good men divine--do they not? and
+the Spartans, when they praise a good man, say 'that he is a divine man.'
+
+MENO:  And I think, Socrates, that they are right; although very likely our
+friend Anytus may take offence at the word.
+
+SOCRATES:  I do not care; as for Anytus, there will be another opportunity
+of talking with him.  To sum up our enquiry--the result seems to be, if we
+are at all right in our view, that virtue is neither natural nor acquired,
+but an instinct given by God to the virtuous.  Nor is the instinct
+accompanied by reason, unless there may be supposed to be among statesmen
+some one who is capable of educating statesmen.  And if there be such an
+one, he may be said to be among the living what Homer says that Tiresias
+was among the dead, 'he alone has understanding; but the rest are flitting
+shades'; and he and his virtue in like manner will be a reality among
+shadows.
+
+MENO:  That is excellent, Socrates.
+
+SOCRATES:  Then, Meno, the conclusion is that virtue comes to the virtuous
+by the gift of God.  But we shall never know the certain truth until,
+before asking how virtue is given, we enquire into the actual nature of
+virtue.  I fear that I must go away, but do you, now that you are persuaded
+yourself, persuade our friend Anytus.  And do not let him be so
+exasperated; if you can conciliate him, you will have done good service to
+the Athenian people.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Meno, by Plato
+
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