Dialogue

 1  Meno|            whether virtue can be taught.’ Socrates replies that
 2  Meno|    knowledge, then virtue can be taught. (This was the stage of
 3  Meno| discovery follows that it is not taught. Virtue, therefore, is and
 4  Meno|        go to the Sophists and be taught.’ The suggestion throws
 5  Meno|        but is incapable of being taught, and is also liable, like
 6  Meno|          question, Can virtue be taught? No one would either ask
 7  Meno|          therefore virtue can be taught. But virtue is not taught,
 8  Meno|        taught. But virtue is not taught, and therefore in this higher
 9  Meno|          is knowledge, it can be taught.’ In the Euthydemus, Socrates
10  Meno|      with his wisdom. And he has taught you the habit of answering
11  Meno|         life, unless he has been taught geometry; for he may be
12  Meno| knowledge. Now, has any one ever taught him all this? You must know
13  Meno|       regard it as a thing to be taught, or as a gift of nature,
14  Meno|      whether virtue is or is not taught, under a hypothesis: as
15  Meno|         mental goods, will it be taught or not? Let the first hypothesis
16  Meno|          in that case will it be taught or not? or, as we were just
17  Meno|          the name. But is virtue taught or not? or rather, does
18  Meno|          that knowledge alone is taught?~MENO: I agree.~SOCRATES:
19  Meno|        knowledge, virtue will be taught?~MENO: Certainly.~SOCRATES:
20  Meno|        such a nature, it will be taught; and if not, not?~MENO:
21  Meno|          no doubt that virtue is taught.~SOCRATES: Yes, indeed;
22  Meno|    virtue is knowledge it may be taught; but I fear that I have
23  Meno|      virtue but anything that is taught, must not have teachers
24  Meno|         to be incapable of being taught?~MENO: True; but do you
25  Meno|          and without having been taught by any one, were they nevertheless
26  Meno|        but whether virtue can be taught, is the question which we
27  Meno|     famous horseman; and had him taught to stand upright on horseback
28  Meno|        if virtue could have been taught, would his father Themistocles
29  Meno|          you know, also, that he taught them to be unrivalled horsemen,
30  Meno|          I suspect, could not be taught. And that you may not suppose
31  Meno|  Thucydides, whose children were taught things for which he had
32  Meno|          spend money, would have taught them to be good men, which
33  Meno|        if virtue could have been taught? Will you reply that he
34  Meno|        if virtue could have been taught, he would have found out
35  Meno|         not a thing which can be taught?~ANYTUS: Socrates, I think
36  Meno|        they agree that virtue is taught?~MENO: No indeed, Socrates,
37  Meno|          time that virtue can be taught, and then again the reverse.~
38  Meno|        thinks that men should be taught to speak.~SOCRATES: Then
39  Meno|     doubts whether virtue can be taught or not, but that Theognis
40  Meno|         imply that virtue can be taught?~MENO: Clearly.~SOCRATES:
41  Meno|          that ‘this thing can be taught,’ and sometimes the opposite?
42  Meno|  admitted that a thing cannot be taught of which there are neither
43  Meno|  SOCRATES: Then virtue cannot be taught?~MENO: Not if we are right
44  Meno|      then, as we thought, it was taught?~MENO: Yes.~SOCRATES: And
45  Meno|          SOCRATES: And if it was taught it was wisdom?~MENO: Certainly.~
46  Meno|       were teachers, it might be taught; and if there were no teachers,
47  Meno|     acknowledged that it was not taught, and was not wisdom?~MENO:
48  Meno|   SOCRATES: But if virtue is not taught, neither is virtue knowledge.~