Superphysics
Meno by Plato Simplified
10 minutes • 2038 words
Anytus, do you mean to say that these are the only ones who do no good and corrupt those who are entrusted to them?
In return for this disservice, they have the face to demand money?
I cannot believe you.
I know of one man, Protagoras, who made more out of his craft than the illustrious Pheidias, who created such noble works.
How could that be?
A mender of old shoes, or patcher up of clothes, who made the shoes or clothes worse than he received them, could not have remained 30 days undetected.
For more than 40 years, Protagoras was corrupting all Hellas, and sending his disciples from him worse than he received them, and he was never found out.
He was around 70 years old at his death, 40 of which were spent in the practice of his profession. During all that time he had a good reputation, which to this day he retains:
and not only Protagoras, but many others are well spoken of; some who lived before him, and others who are still living.
When you say that 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?
No. The young men who gave their money to them were out of their minds. Their relations and guardians who entrusted their youth to the care of these men were still more out of their minds.
Most of all, the cities who allowed them to come in, and did not drive them out, citizen and stranger alike.
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.
Then you are entirely unacquainted with them?
ANYTUS: And I have no wish to be acquainted.
Then, 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.
You must be a diviner, Anytus. I really cannot make out how you know about them if you are not acquainted with 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?
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.
Tell me to whom among the Athenians he should go.
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.
Did those gentlemen grow of themselves; and without having been taught by any one, 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?
Yes, certainly, Anytus. 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.
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.
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.
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.
Then no one could say that his son showed any want of capacity?
ANYTUS: Very likely not.
But did any one, 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 any one say so.
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.
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.
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.
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?
He must have wished it. But virtue, as I suspect, could not be taught. You may not suppose the incompetent teachers to be only the meaner sort of Athenians and few in number, remember again that Thucydides had two sons, Melesias and Stephanus, whom, besides giving them a good education in other things, he trained in wrestling, and they were the best wrestlers in Athens: one of them he committed to the care of Xanthias, and the other of Eudorus, who had the reputation of being the most celebrated wrestlers of that day. Do you remember them?
ANYTUS: I have heard of them.
Thucydides, whose children were taught things for which he had to spend money, would have taught them to be good men, which would have cost him nothing, if virtue could have been taught?
Will you reply that he was a mean man, and had not many friends among the Athenians and allies?
But he was of a great family, and a man of influence at Athens and in all Hellas, and, if virtue could have been taught, he would have found out some Athenian or foreigner who would have made good men of his sons, if he could not himself spare the time from cares of state. Once more, I suspect, friend Anytus, that virtue is not a thing which can be taught?
ANYTUS: Socrates, I think that you are too ready to speak evil of men: and, if you will take my advice, I would recommend you to be careful. Perhaps there is no city in which it is not easier to do men harm than to do them good, and this is certainly the case at Athens, as I believe that you know.
O Meno, think that Anytus is in a rage. And he may well be in a rage, for he thinks, in the first place, that I am defaming these gentlemen; and in the second place, he is of opinion that he is one of them himself.
But some day he will know what is the meaning of defamation, and if he ever does, he will forgive me. Meanwhile I will return to you, Meno; for I suppose that there are gentlemen in your region too?
MENO: Certainly there are.
Are they willing to teach the young? and do they profess to be teachers? and do they agree that virtue is taught?
MENO: No indeed, Socrates, they are anything but agreed; you may hear them saying at one time that virtue can be taught, and then again the reverse.
Can we call those teachers who do not acknowledge the possibility of their own vocation?
MENO: I think not, Socrates.
What do you think of these Sophists, who are the only professors? Do they seem to you to be teachers of virtue?
MENO: I often wonder, Socrates, that Gorgias is never heard promising to teach virtue: and when he hears others promising he only laughs at them; but he thinks that men should be taught to speak.
Then do you not think that the Sophists are teachers?
MENO: I cannot tell you, Socrates; like the rest of the world, I am in doubt, and sometimes I think that they are teachers and sometimes not.
Are you aware that not you only and other politicians have doubts whether virtue can be taught or not, but that Theognis the poet says the very same thing?
MENO: Where does he say so?
In these elegiac verses (Theog.):
‘Eat and drink and sit with the mighty, and make yourself agreeable to them; for from the good you will learn what is good, but if you mix with the bad you will lose the intelligence which you already have.’
Do you observe that here he seems to imply that virtue can be taught?
MENO: Clearly.
But in some other verses he shifts about and says (Theog.):
‘If understanding could be created and put into a man, then they’ (who were able to perform this feat) ‘would have obtained great rewards.’
‘Never would a bad son have sprung from a good sire, for he would have heard the voice of instruction; but not by teaching will you ever make a bad man into a good one.’
This is a contradiction of the other.
MENO: Clearly.
Is there anything else of which the professors are affirmed not only not to be teachers of others, but to be ignorant themselves, and bad at the knowledge of that which they are professing to teach?
or is there anything about which even the acknowledged ‘gentlemen’ are sometimes saying that ’this thing can be taught,’ and sometimes the opposite? Can you say that they are teachers in any true sense whose ideas are in such confusion?
MENO: I should say, certainly not.
But if neither the Sophists nor the gentlemen are teachers, clearly there can be no other teachers?
MENO: No.
If there are no teachers, neither are there disciples?
MENO: Agreed.
We have admitted that a thing cannot be taught of which there are neither teachers nor disciples?
MENO: We have.
There are no teachers of virtue to be found anywhere?
MENO: There are not.
If there are no teachers, neither are there scholars?
MENO: That, I think, is true.
