- Meno: Can you tell me,
Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice . .
. or in what other way?
- Socrates: My dear Meno. Here at
Athens all wisdom seems to have emigrated from us. 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.
- Meno: 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?
- Soc: 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?
- Soc: 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. . . . By the gods,
Meno, be generous, and tell me what you say that virtue is; for I
shall be 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.
. . .
- Soc: How fortunate I am, Meno!
When I ask you for one virtue, you present me with a swarm of them,
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.
- Soc: 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.
- Soc: 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? . . . 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.
- Soc: 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
that 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?
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