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MENO
MENO PLATO Socrates reminds Meno that this is only an enumeration of the virtues and
not a definition of the notion which is common to them all. In a second
attempt Meno defines virtue to be 'the power of command.' But to this
again exceptions are taken. For there must be a virtue of those who obey
as well as of those who command; and the power of command must be justly or
not unjustly exercised. Meno is very ready to admit that justice is
virtue: 'Would you say virtue or a virtue for there are other virtues
such as courage temperance and the like; just as round is a figure and
black and white are colours and yet there are other figures and other
colours. Let Meno take the examples of figure and colour and try to
define them.' Meno confesses his inability and after a process of
interrogation in which Socrates explains to him the nature of a 'simile in
multis' Socrates himself defines figure as 'the accompaniment of colour.'
But some one may object that he does not know the meaning of the word
'colour;' and if he is a candid friend and not a mere disputant Socrates
is willing to furnish him with a simpler and more philosophical definition
into which no disputed word is allowed to intrude: 'Figure is the limit of
form.' Meno imperiously insists that he must still have a definition of
colour. Some raillery follows; and at length Socrates is induced to reply
'that colour is the effluence of form sensible and in due proportion to
the sight.' This definition is exactly suited to the taste of Meno who
welcomes the familiar language of Gorgias and Empedocles. Socrates is of
opinion that the more abstract or dialectical definition of figure is far
better.
Now that Meno has been made to understand the nature of a general
definition he answers in the spirit of a Greek gentleman and in the words
of a poet 'that virtue is to delight in things honourable and to have the
power of getting them.' This is a nearer approximation than he has yet
made to a complete definition and regarded as a piece of proverbial or
popular morality is not far from the truth. But the objection is urged
'that the honourable is the good' and as every one equally desires the
good the point of the definition is contained in the words 'the power of
getting them.' 'And they must be got justly or with justice.' The
definition will then stand thus: 'Virtue is the power of getting good with
justice.' But justice is a part of virtue and therefore virtue is the
getting of good with a part of virtue. The definition repeats the word
defined.
Meno complains that the conversation of Socrates has the effect of a
torpedo's shock upon him. When he talks with other persons he has plenty
to say about virtue; in the presence of Socrates his thoughts desert him.
Socrates replies that he is only the cause of perplexity in others because
he is himself perplexed. He proposes to continue the enquiry. But how
asks Meno can he enquire either into what he knows or into what he does
not know? This is a sophistical puzzle which as Socrates remarks saves
a great deal of trouble to him who accepts it. But the puzzle has a real
difficulty latent under it to which Socrates will endeavour to find a
reply. The difficulty is the origin of knowledge:--
He has heard from priests and priestesses and from the poet Pindar of an
immortal soul which is born again and again in successive periods of
existence returning into this world when she has paid the penalty of
ancient crime and having wandered over all places of the upper and under
world and seen and known all things at one time or other is by
association out of one thing capable of recovering all. For nature is of
one kindred; and every soul has a seed or germ which may be developed into
all knowledge. The existence of this latent knowledge is further proved by
the interrogation of one of Meno's slaves who in the skilful hands of
Socrates is made to acknowledge some elementary relations of geometrical
figures. The theorem that the square of the diagonal is double the square
of the side--that famous discovery of primitive mathematics in honour of
which the legendary Pythagoras is said to have sacrificed a hecatomb--is
elicited from him. The first step in the process of teaching has made him
conscious of his own ignorance. He has had the 'torpedo's shock' given
him and is the better for the operation. But whence had the uneducated
man this knowledge? He had never learnt geometry in this world; nor was it
born with him; he must therefore have had it when he was not a man. And as
he always either was or was not a man he must have always had it.
(Compare Phaedo.)
After Socrates has given this specimen of the true nature of teaching the
original question of the teachableness of virtue is renewed. Again he
professes a desire to know 'what virtue is' first. But he is willing to
argue the question as mathematicians say under an hypothesis. He will
assume that if virtue is knowledge then virtue can be taught. (This was
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
in this passage. But he is far from saying as some have imagined that
inspiration or divine grace is to be regarded as higher than knowledge. He
would not have preferred the poet or man of action to the philosopher or
the virtue of custom to the virtue based upon ideas.
Also here as in the Ion and Phaedrus Plato appears to acknowledge an
unreasoning element in the higher nature of man. The philosopher only has
knowledge and yet the statesman and the poet are inspired. There may be a
sort of irony in regarding in this way the gifts of genius. But there is
no reason to suppose that he is deriding them any more than he is deriding
the phenomena of love or of enthusiasm in the Symposium or of oracles in
the Apology or of divine intimations when he is speaking of the daemonium
of Socrates. He recognizes the lower form of right opinion as well as the
higher one of science in the spirit of one who desires to include in his
philosophy every aspect of human life; just as he recognizes the existence
of popular opinion as a fact and the Sophists as the expression of it.
This Dialogue contains the first intimation of the doctrine of reminiscence
and of the immortality of the soul. The proof is very slight even
slighter than in the Phaedo and Republic. Because men had abstract ideas
in a previous state they must have always had them and their souls
therefore must have always existed. For they must always have been either
men or not men. The fallacy of the latter words is transparent. And
Socrates himself appears to be conscious of their weakness; for he adds
immediately afterwards 'I have said some things of which I am not
altogether confident.' (Compare Phaedo.) It may be observed however
that the fanciful notion of pre-existence is combined with a true but
partial view of the origin and unity of knowledge and of the association
of ideas. Knowledge is prior to any particular knowledge and exists not
in the previous state of the individual but of the race. It is potential
not actual and can only be appropriated by strenuous exertion.
The idealism of Plato is here presented in a less developed form than in
the Phaedo and Phaedrus. Nothing is said of the pre-existence of ideas of
justice temperance and the like. Nor is Socrates positive of anything
but the duty of enquiry. The doctrine of reminiscence too is explained
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Unpublished Work 
