? Is
virtue the same in a child and in a slave, Meno? Can the child govern
his father, or the slave his master; and would he who governed be any
longer a slave?

MENO: I think not, Socrates.

SOCRATES: No, indeed; there would be small reason in that. Yet once
more, fair friend; according to you, virtue is 'the power of governing;'
but do you not add 'justly and not unjustly'?

MENO: Yes, Socrates; I agree there; for justice is virtue.

SOCRATES: Would you say 'virtue,' Meno, or 'a virtue'?

MENO: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: I mean as I might say about anything; that a round, for
example, is 'a figure' and not simply 'figure,' and I should adopt this
mode of speaking, because there are other figures.

MENO: Quite right; and that is just what I am saying about virtue--that
there are other virtues as well as justice.

SOCRATES: What are they? tell me the names of them, as I would tell you
the names of the other figures if you asked me.

MENO: Courage and temperance and wisdom and magnanimity are virtues; and
there are many others.

SOCRATES: Yes, Meno; and again we are in the same case: in searching
after one virtue we have found many, though not in the same way as
before; but we have been unable to find the common virtue which runs
through them all.

MENO: Why, Socrates, even now I am not able to follow you in the attempt
to get at one common notion of virtue as of other things.

SOCRATES: No wonder; but I will try to get nearer if I can, for you know
that all things have a common notion. Suppose now that some one asked
you the question which I asked before: Meno, he would say, what is
figure? And if you answered 'roundness,' he would reply to you, in
my way of speaking, by asking whether you would say that roundness is
'figure' or 'a figure;' and you would answer 'a figure.'

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And for this reason--that there are other figures?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And if he proceeded to ask, What other figures are there? you
would have told him.

MENO: I should.

SOCRATES: And if he similarly asked what colour is, and you answered
whiteness, and the questioner rejoined, Would you say that whiteness is
colour or a colour? you would reply, A colour, because there are other
colours as well.

MENO: I should.

SOCRATES: And if he had said, Tell me what they are?--you would have
told him of other colours which are colours just as much as whiteness.

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And suppose