MENO: Do tell me.

SOCRATES: You would not wonder if you had ever observed the images of
Daedalus (Compare Euthyphro); but perhaps you have not got them in your
country?

MENO: What have they to do with the question?

SOCRATES: Because they require to be fastened in order to keep them, and
if they are not fastened they will play truant and run away.

MENO: Well, what of that?

SOCRATES: I mean to say that they are not very valuable possessions if
they are at liberty, for they will walk off like runaway slaves; but when
fastened, they are of great value, for they are really beautiful works of
art. Now this is an illustration of the nature of true opinions: while
they abide with us they are beautiful and fruitful, but they run away out
of the human soul, and do not remain long, and therefore they are not of
much value until they are fastened by the tie of the cause; and this
fastening of them, friend Meno, is recollection, as you and I have agreed
to call it. But when they are bound, in the first place, they have the
nature of knowledge; and, in the second place, they are abiding. And this
is why knowledge is more honourable and excellent than true opinion,
because fastened by a chain.

MENO: What you are saying, Socrates, seems to be very like the truth.

SOCRATES: I too speak rather in ignorance; I only conjecture. And yet
that knowledge differs from true opinion is no matter of conjecture with
me. There are not many things which I profess to know, but this is most
certainly one of them.

MENO: Yes, Socrates; and you are quite right in saying so.

SOCRATES: And am I not also right in saying that true opinion leading the
way perfects action quite as well as knowledge?

MENO: There again, Socrates, I think you are right.

SOCRATES: Then right opinion is not a whit inferior to knowledge, or less
useful in action; nor is the man who has right opinion inferior to him who
has knowledge?

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: And surely the good man has been acknowledged by us to be
useful?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: Seeing then that men become good and useful to states, not only
because they have knowledge, but because they have right opinion, and that
neither knowledge nor right opinion is given to man by nature or acquired
by him--(do you imagine either of them to be given by nature?

MENO: Not I.)

SOCRATES: Then if they are not given by nature, neither are the good by
nature good?

MENO: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: And nature being excluded, then came the question whether virtue
is acquired by teaching?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: If virtue was wisdom (or knowledge), then, as we thought, it was
taught?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And if it was taught it was wisdom?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And if there were teachers, it might be taught; and if there
were no teachers, not?

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: But surely we acknowledged that there were no teachers of
virtue?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then we acknowledged that it was not taught, and was not wisdom?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And yet we admitted that it was a good?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the right guide is useful and good?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And the only right guides are knowledge and true opinion--these


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