the stage of the argument at which the Protagoras concluded.)

Socrates has no difficulty in showing that virtue is a good, and that
goods, whether of body or mind, must be under the direction of knowledge.
Upon the assumption just made, then, virtue is teachable. But where are
the teachers? There are none to be found. This is extremely discouraging.
Virtue is no sooner discovered to be teachable, than the discovery follows
that it is not taught. Virtue, therefore, is and is not teachable.

In this dilemma an appeal is made to Anytus, a respectable and well-to-do
citizen of the old school, and a family friend of Meno, who happens to be
present. He is asked 'whether Meno shall go to the Sophists and be
taught.' The suggestion throws him into a rage. 'To whom, then, shall
Meno go?' asks Socrates. To any Athenian gentleman--to the great Athenian
statesmen of past times. Socrates replies here, as elsewhere (Laches,
Prot.), that Themistocles, Pericles, and other great men, had sons to whom
they would surely, if they could have done so, have imparted their own
political wisdom; but no one ever heard that these sons of theirs were
remarkable for anything except riding and wrestling and similar
accomplishments. Anytus is angry at the imputation which is cast on his
favourite statesmen, and on a class to which he supposes himself to belong;
he breaks off with a significant hint. The mention of another opportunity
of talking with him, and the suggestion that Meno may do the Athenian
people a service by pacifying him, are evident allusions to the trial of
Socrates.

Socrates returns to the consideration of the question 'whether virtue is
teachable,' which was denied on the ground that there are no teachers of
it: (for the Sophists are bad teachers, and the rest of the world do not
profess to teach). But there is another point which we failed to observe,
and in which Gorgias has never instructed Meno, nor Prodicus Socrates.
This is the nature of right opinion. For virtue may be under the guidance
of right opinion as well as of knowledge; and right opinion is for
practical purposes as good as knowledge, but is incapable of being taught,
and is also liable, like the images of Daedalus, to 'walk off,' because not
bound by the tie of the cause. This is the sort of instinct which is
possessed by statesmen, who are not wise or knowing persons, but only
inspired or divine. The higher virtue, which is identical with knowledge,
is an ideal only. If the statesman had this knowledge, and could teach
what he knew, he would be like Tiresias in the world below,--'he alone has
wisdom, but the rest flit like shadows.'

This Dialogue is an attempt to answer the question, Can virtue be taught?
No one would either ask or answer such a question in modern times. But in
the age of Socrates it was only by an effort that the mind could rise to a
general notion of virtue as distinct from the particular virtues of
courage, liberality, and the like. And when a hazy conception of this
ideal was attained, it was only by a further effort that the question of
the teachableness of virtue could be resolved.

The answer which is given by Plato is paradoxical enough, and seems rather
intended to stimulate than to satisfy enquiry. Virtue is knowledge, and
therefore virtue can be taught. But virtue is not taught, and therefore in
this higher and ideal sense there is no virtue and no knowledge. The
teaching of the Sophists is confessedly inadequate, and Meno, who is their
pupil, is ignorant of the very nature of general terms. He can only
produce out of their armoury the sophism, 'that you can neither enquire
into what you know nor into what you do not know;' to which Socrates
replies by his theory of reminiscence.

To the doctrine that virtue is knowledge, Plato has been constantly tending
in the previous Dialogues. But the new truth is no sooner found than it
vanishes away. 'If there is knowledge, there must be teachers; and where
are the teachers?' There is no knowledge in the higher sense of
systematic, connected, reasoned knowledge, such as may one day be attained,
and such as Plato himself seems to see in some far off vision of a single
science. And there are no teachers in the higher sense of the word; that
is to say, no real teachers who will arouse the spirit of enquiry in their
pupils, and not merely instruct them in rhetoric or impart to them ready-
made information for a fee of 'one' or of 'fifty drachms.' Plato is
desirous of deepening the notion of education, and therefore he asserts the
paradox that there are no educators. This paradox, though different in
form, is not really different from the remark which is often made in modern
times by those who would depreciate either the methods of education
commonly employed, or the standard attained--that 'there is no true
education among us.'

There remains still a possibility which must not be overlooked. Even if
there be no true knowledge, as is proved by 'the wretched state of
education,' there may be right opinion, which is a sort of guessing or
divination resting on no knowledge of causes, and incommunicable to others.
This is the gift which our statesmen have, as is proved by the circumstance
that they are unable to impart their knowledge to their sons. Those who
are possessed of it cannot be said to be men of science or philosophers,
but they are inspired and divine.

There may be some trace of irony in this curious passage, which forms the
concluding portion of the Dialogue. But Plato certainly does not mean to
intimate that the supernatural or divine is the true basis of human life.
To him knowledge, if only attainable in this world, is of all things the
most divine. Yet, like other philosophers, he is willing to admit that
'probability is the guide of life (Butler's Analogy.);' and he is at the
same time desirous of contrasting the wisdom which governs the world with a
higher wisdom. There are many instincts, judgments, and anticipations of
the human mind which cannot be reduced to rule, and of which the grounds
cannot always be given in words. A person may have some skill or latent
experience which he is able to use himself and is yet unable to teach
others, because he has no principles, and is incapable of collecting or
arranging his ideas. He has practice, but not theory; art, but not
science. This is a true fact of psychology, which is recognized by Plato


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