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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: conveyed, almost in a word, that the verbal sceptic is saved the labour of
thought and enquiry (ouden dei to toiouto zeteseos). Characteristic also
of the temper of the Socratic enquiry is, (4) the proposal to discuss the
teachableness of virtue under an hypothesis, after the manner of the
mathematicians; and (5) the repetition of the favourite doctrine which
occurs so frequently in the earlier and more Socratic Dialogues, and gives
a colour to all of them--that mankind only desire evil through ignorance;
(6) the experiment of eliciting from the slave-boy the mathematical truth
which is latent in him, and (7) the remark that he is all the better for
knowing his ignorance.
The character of Meno, like that of Critias, has no relation to the actual
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