Page - 299 - in The Complete Plato

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 299