Quite right. And now there is an opportunity of your joining me in a consultation on my friend Meno here. He has been declaring to me ever so long, Anytus, that he desires to have that wisdom and virtue whereby men keep their house or their city in good order, and honor their parents, and know when to welcome and when to speed citizens and strangers as befits a good man. Now tell me, to whom ought we properly to send him for lessons in this virtue? Or is it clear enough, from our argument just now, that he should go to these men who profess to be teachers of virtue and advertise themselves as the common teachers of the Greeks, and are ready to instruct anyone who chooses in return for fees charged on a fixed scale?
To whom are you referring, Socrates?
Surely you know as well as anyone; they are the men whom people call sophists.
For heaven’s sake hold your tongue, Socrates! May no kinsman or friend of mine, whether of this city or another, be seized with such madness as to let himself be infected with the company of those men; for they are a manifest plague and corruption to those who frequent them.Anytus’ vehemence expresses the hostility of the ordinary practical democrat, after the restoration of 403 B.C., towards any novel movement in the state.
What is this, Anytus? Of all the people who set up to understand how to do us good, do you mean to single out these as conveying not merely no benefit, such as the rest can give, but actually corruption to anyone placed in their hands? And is it for doing this that they openly claim the payment of fees? For my part I cannot bring myself to believe you; for I know of one man, Protagoras, who amassed more money by his craft than Pheidias—so famous for the noble works he produced—or any ten other sculptors. And yet how surprising that menders of old shoes and furbishers of clothes should not be able to go undetected thirty days if they should return the clothes or shoes in worse condition than they received them, and that such doings on their part would quickly starve them to death, while for more than forty years all Greece failed to notice that Protagoras was corrupting his classes and sending his pupils away in a worse state than when he took charge of them! For I believe he died about seventy years old, forty of which he spent in the practice of his art;
and he retains undiminished to this day the high reputation he has enjoyed all that time—and not only Protagoras, but a multitude of others too: some who lived before him, and others still living. Now are we to take it, according to you, that they wittingly deceived and corrupted the youth, or that they were themselves unconscious of it? Are we to conclude those who are frequently termed the wisest of mankind to have been so demented as that?
Demented! Not they, Socrates: far rather the young men who pay them money, and still more the relations who let the young men have their way; and most of all the cities that allow them to enter, and do not expel them, whether such attempt be made by stranger or citizen.
Tell me, Anytus, has any of the sophists wronged you? What makes you so hard on them?
No, heaven knows I have never in my life had dealings with any of them, nor would I let any of my people have to do with them either.
Then you have absolutely no experience of those persons?
And trust I never may.
How then, my good sir, can you tell whether a thing has any good or evil in it, if you are quite without experience of it?
Easily: the fact is, I know what these people are, whether I have experience of them or not.
You are a wizard, perhaps, Anytus; for I really cannot see, from what you say yourself, how else you can know anything about them. But we are not inquiring now who the teachers are whose lessons would make Meno wicked; let us grant, if you will, that they are the sophists: I only ask you to tell us, and do Meno a service as a friend of your family by letting him know, to whom in all this great city he should apply in order to become eminent in the virtue which I described just now.
Why not tell him yourself?
I did mention to him the men whom I supposed to be teachers of these things; but I find, from what you say, that I am quite off the track, and I daresay you are on it. Now you take your turn, and tell him to whom of the Athenians he is to go. Give us a name—anyone you please.
Why mention a particular one? Any Athenian gentleman he comes across, without exception, will do him more good, if he will do as he is bid, than the sophists.
And did those gentlemen grow spontaneously into what they are, and without learning from anybody are they able, nevertheless, to teach others what they did not learn themselves?
I expect they must have learnt in their turn from the older generation, who were gentlemen: or does it not seem to you that we have had many good men in this city?
Yes, I agree, Anytus; we have also many who are good at politics, and have had them in the past as well as now. But I want to know whether they have proved good teachers besides of their own virtue: that is the question with which our discussion is actually concerned; not whether there are, or formerly have been, good men here amongst us or not, but whether virtue is teachable; this has been our problem all the time. And our inquiry into this problem resolves itself into the question: Did the good men of our own and of former times know how to transmit to another man the virtue in respect of which they were good, or is it something not to be transmitted or taken over from one human being to another? That is the question I and Meno have been discussing all this time. Well, just consider it in your own way of speaking: would you not say that Themistocles was a good man?
I would, particularly so.
And if any man ever was a teacher of his own virtue, he especially was a good teacher of his?
In my opinion, yes, assuming that he wished to be so.
But can you suppose he would not have wished that other people should become good, honorable men—above all, I presume, his own son? Or do you think he was jealous of him, and deliberately refused to impart the virtue of his own goodness to him? Have you never heard how Themistocles had his son Cleophantus taught to be a good horseman? Why, he could keep his balance standing upright on horseback, and hurl the javelin while so standing, and perform many other wonderful feats in which his father had had him trained, so as to make him skilled in all that could be learnt from good masters. Surely you must have heard all this from your elders?
I have.
Then there could be no complaints of badness in his son’s nature?
I daresay not.
But I ask you—did you ever hear anybody, old or young, say that Cleophantus, son of Themistocles, had the same goodness and accomplishments as his father?
Certainly not.
And can we believe that his father chose to train his own son in those feats, and yet made him no better than his neighbors in his own particular accomplishments—if virtue, as alleged, was to be taught?