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.



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