The Meno by Plato. - HTML preview

33

Meno

SOCRATES: Then they who order a state or a SOCRATES: Then now that the sameness of all house temperately or justly order them with tem-virtue has been proven, try and remember what perance and justice?

you and Gorgias say that virtue is.

MENO: Certainly.

MENO: Will you have one definition of them all?

SOCRATES: Then both men and women, if they SOCRATES: That is what I am seeking.

are to be good men and women, must have the MENO: If you want to have one definition of them same virtues of temperance and justice?

all, I know not what to say, but that virtue is the MENO: True.

power of governing mankind.

SOCRATES: And can either a young man or an SOCRATES: And does this definition of virtue in-elder one be good, if they are intemperate and clude all virtue? Is virtue the same in a child and unjust?

in a slave, Meno? Can the child govern his fa-MENO: They cannot.

ther, or the slave his master; and would he who SOCRATES: They must be temperate and just?

governed be any longer a slave?

MENO: Yes.

MENO: I think not, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Then all men are good in the same SOCRATES: No, indeed; there would be small rea-way, and by participation in the same virtues?

son in that. Yet once more, fair friend; according MENO: Such is the inference.

to you, virtue is ‘the power of governing;’ but SOCRATES: And they surely would not have been do you not add ‘justly and not unjustly’?

good in the same way, unless their virtue had MENO: Yes, Socrates; I agree there; for justice is virtue.

been the same?

SOCRATES: Would you say ‘virtue,’ Meno, or ‘a MENO: They would not.

virtue’?