Dialogues

they deceived and corrupted the youth, are they to be supposed to have corrupted them consciously or unconsciously? Can those who were deemed by many to be the wisest men of Hellas have been out of their minds? Anytus Out of their minds! No, Socrates; the young men who gave their money to them were out of their minds, and their relations and guardians who entrusted their youth to the care of these men were still more out of their minds, and most of all, the cities who allowed them to come in, and did not drive them out, citizen and stranger alike. Socrates Has any of the Sophists wronged you, Anytus? What makes you so angry with them? Anytus No, indeed, neither I nor any of my belongings has ever had, nor would I suffer them to have, anything to do with them. Socrates Then you are entirely unacquainted with them? Anytus And I have no wish to be acquainted. Socrates Then, my dear friend, how can you know whether a thing is good or bad of which you are wholly ignorant? Anytus Quite well; I am sure that I know what manner of men these are, whether I am acquainted with them or not. Socrates You must be a diviner, Anytus, for I really cannot make out, judging from your own words, how, if you are not acquainted with them, you know about them. But I am not enquiring of you who are the teachers who will corrupt Meno (let them be, if you please, the Sophists); I only ask you to tell him who there is in this great city who will teach him how to become eminent in the virtues which I was just now describing. He is the friend of your family, and you will oblige him. Anytus Why do you not tell him yourself? Socrates I have told him whom I supposed to be the teachers of these things; but I learn from you that I am utterly at fault, and I dare say that you are right. And now I wish that you, on your part, would tell me to whom among the Athenians he should go. Whom would you name? Anytus Why single out individuals? Any Athenian gentleman, taken at random, if he will mind him, will do far more good to him than the Sophists. Socrates And did those gentlemen grow of themselves; and without having been taught by anyone, were they nevertheless able to teach others that which they had never learned themselves? Anytus I imagine that they learned of the previous generation of gentlemen. Have there not been many good men in this city? Socrates Yes, certainly, Anytus; and many good statesmen also there always have been and there are still, in the city of Athens. But the question is whether they were also good teachers of their own virtue;⁠—not whether there are, or have been, good men in this part of the world, but whether virtue can be taught, is the question which we have been discussing. Now, do we mean to say that the good men of our own and of other times knew how to impart to others that virtue which they had themselves; or is virtue a thing incapable of being communicated or imparted by one man to another? That is the question which I and Meno have been arguing. Look at the matter in your own way: Would you not admit that Themistocles was a good man? Anytus Certainly; no man better. Socrates And must not he then have been a good teacher, if any man ever was a good teacher, of his own virtue? Anytus Yes certainly⁠—if he wanted to be so. Socrates But would he not have wanted? He would, at any rate, have desired to make his own son a good man and a gentleman; he could not have been jealous of him, or have intentionally abstained from imparting to him his own virtue. Did you never hear that he made his son Cleophantus a famous horseman; and had him taught to stand upright on horseback and hurl a javelin, and to do many other marvellous things; and in anything which could be learned from a master he was well trained? Have you not heard from our elders of him? Anytus I have. Socrates Then no one could say that his son showed any want of capacity? Anytus Very likely not. Socrates But did anyone, old or young, ever say in your hearing that Cleophantus, son of Themistocles, was a wise or good man, as his father was? Anytus I have certainly never heard anyone say so. Socrates And if virtue could have been taught, would his father Themistocles have sought to train him in these minor accomplishments, and allowed him who, as you must remember, was his own son, to be no better than his neighbours in those qualities in which he himself excelled? Anytus Indeed, indeed, I think not. Socrates Here was a teacher of virtue whom you admit to be among the best men of the past. Let us take another⁠—Aristides, the son of Lysimachus: would you not acknowledge that he was a good man? Anytus To be sure I should. Socrates And did not he train his son Lysimachus better than any other Athenian in all that could be done for him by the help of masters? But what has been the result? Is he a bit better than any other mortal? He is an acquaintance of yours, and you see what he is like. There is Pericles, again, magnificent in his wisdom; and he, as you are aware, had two sons, Paralus and Xanthippus. Anytus I know. Socrates And you know, also, that he taught them to be unrivalled horsemen, and had them trained in music and gymnastics and all sorts of arts⁠—in these respects they were on a level with the best⁠—and had he no wish to make good men of them? Nay, he must have wished it. But virtue, as I suspect, could not be taught. And that you may not suppose the incompetent teachers to be only the meaner sort of Athenians