s 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 teach