SOCRATES: And so forth?
would not such conduct be the height of folly?
ANYTUS: Yes.
ANYTUS: Yes, by Zeus, and of ignorance too.
SOCRATES: Let me trouble you with one more SOCRATES: Very good. And now you are in a posi-question. When we say that we should be right tion to advise with me about my friend Meno. He in sending him to the physicians if we wanted has been telling me, Anytus, that he desires to at-him to be a physician, do we mean that we should tain that kind of wisdom and virtue by which men be right in sending him to those who profess the order the state or the house, and honour their par-art, rather than to those who do not, and to those ents, and know when to receive and when to send who demand payment for teaching the art, and away citizens and strangers, as a good man should.
profess to teach it to any one who will come and Now, to whom should he go in order that he may learn? And if these were our reasons, should we learn this virtue? Does not the previous argument not be right in sending him?
imply clearly that we should send him to those who ANYTUS: Yes.
profess and avouch that they are the common SOCRATES: And might not the same be said of teachers of all Hellas, and are ready to impart in-flute-playing, and of the other arts? Would a man struction to any one who likes, at a fixed price?
who wanted to make another a flute-player refuse ANYTUS: Whom do you mean, Socrates?
to send him to those who profess to teach the art SOCRATES: You surely know, do you not, Anytus, for money, and be plaguing other persons to give that these are the people whom mankind call him instruction, who are not professed teachers Sophists?
and who never had a single disciple in that branch ANYTUS: By Heracles, Socrates, forbear! I only of knowledge which he wishes him to acquire—
hope that no friend or kinsman or acquaintance 59
Meno
of mine, whether citizen or stranger, will ever be them, and he was never found out. For, if I am not so mad as to allow himself to be corrupted by mistaken, he was about seventy years old at his them; for they are a manifest pest and corrupt-death, forty of which were spent in the practice ing influence to those who have to do with them.
of his profession; and during all that time he had SOCRATES: What, Anytus? Of all the people who a good reputation, which to this day he retains: profess that they know how to do men good, do and not only Protagoras, but many others are well you mean to say that these are the only ones who spoken of; some who lived before him, and others not only do them no good, but positively corrupt who are still living. Now, when you say that they those who are entrusted to them, and in return deceived and corrupted the youth, are they to be for this disservice have the face to demand money?
supposed to have corrupted them consciously or Indeed, I cannot believe you; for I know of a single unconsciously? Can those who were deemed by man, Protagoras, who made more out of his craft many to be the wisest men of Hellas have been than the illustrious Pheidias, who created such out of their minds?
noble works, or any ten other statuaries. How ANYTUS: Out of their minds! No, Socrates; the could that be? A mender of old shoes, or patcher young men who gave their money to them were up of clothes, who made the shoes or clothes worse out of their minds, and their relations and guard-than he received them, could not have remained ians who entrusted their youth to the care of thirty days undetected, and would very soon have these men were still more out of their minds, starved; whereas during more than forty years, and most of all, the cities who allowed them to Protagoras was corrupting all Hellas, and send-come in, and did not drive them out, citizen and ing his disciples from him worse than he received stranger alike.