MENO
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SOCRATES: And can either a young man or an elder one be good, if they are
intemperate and unjust?

MENO: They cannot.

SOCRATES: They must be temperate and just?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then all men are good in the same way, and by participation in
the same virtues?

MENO: Such is the inference.

SOCRATES: And they surely would not have been good in the same way, unless
their virtue had been the same?

MENO: They would not.

SOCRATES: Then now that the sameness of all virtue has been proven, try
and remember what you and Gorgias say that virtue is.

MENO: Will you have one definition of them all?

SOCRATES: That is what I am seeking.

MENO: If you want to have one definition of them all, I know not what to
say, but that virtue is the power of governing mankind.

SOCRATES: And does this definition of virtue include all virtue? 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