The Meno by Plato. - HTML preview

38

Meno

MENO: Yes.

and were not compelled, as you said yesterday, SOCRATES: And now, as Pindar says, ‘read my to go away before the mysteries.

meaning:’—colour is an effluence of form, com-MENO: But I will stay, Socrates, if you will give mensurate with sight, and palpable to sense.

me many such answers.

MENO: That, Socrates, appears to me to be an SOCRATES: Well then, for my own sake as well admirable answer.

as for yours, I will do my very best; but I am SOCRATES: Why, yes, because it happens to be afraid that I shall not be able to give you very one which you have been in the habit of hearing: many as good: and now, in your turn, you are to and your wit will have discovered, I suspect, that fulfil your promise, and tell me what virtue is in you may explain in the same way the nature of the universal; and do not make a singular into a sound and smell, and of many other similar phe-plural, as the facetious say of those who break a nomena.

thing, but deliver virtue to me whole and sound, MENO: Quite true.

and not broken into a number of pieces: I have SOCRATES: The answer, Meno, was in the ortho-given you the pattern.

dox solemn vein, and therefore was more accept-MENO: Well then, Socrates, virtue, as I take it, is able to you than the other answer about figure.

when he, who desires the honourable, is able to pro-MENO: Yes.

vide it for himself; so the poet says, and I say too—

SOCRATES: And yet, O son of Alexidemus, I can-

‘ Virtue is the desire of things honourable and not help thinking that the other was the better; the power of attaining them.’

and I am sure that you would be of the same SOCRATES: And does he who desires the opinion, if you would only stay and be initiated, honourable also desire the good?