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 Socrates appears in his life-long search after the ideal knowledge of the best. The two men are naturally at cross purposes. Protagoras contends that virtue is taught by himself and others more or less successfully, and is not one but many. Socrates disputes the possibility of teaching virtue (since all men equally profess it, and even statesmen fail to give it to their sons), but affirms that, if it can be taught, virtue is not many, but one. The discussion, as in the former dialogues, ends inconclusively. But in the course of it Plato vividly sets forth the natural opposition between the empiric and scientific points of view, between a conventional and an intellectual standard. He does full justice to the thesis of Protagoras, and it is not to be supposed that he was contented to remain in the attitude which he has here attributed to Socrates. In his ideal state, where the earlier training of the best citizens is a refinement on the actual Hellenic education, he has to some extent reconciled the conceptions which are here dramatically opposed.

The preparations for the encounter and the description of it include many life-like touches—such as the eagerness of the young Athenian gentleman to hear the sophist, though he would be ashamed to be thought a sophist himself; the confusion into which the house of Callias has been thrown by the crowd of strangers and by the self-importance of rival professors; the graceful dignity of the man who has been forty years a teacher, the graphic description of the whole scene, the characteristic speeches of Prodicus and Hippias (from which some critics have elicited a theory of their doctrines), and the continued irony with which Socrates bears them all in hand and soothes the great man after disconcerting him.

Socrates has observed that rhapsodists and even poets have no definite knowledge of the things which they so powerfully represent (cf. Apol. 22; Phaed., 245 A.; Rep. iii. 398 A). He brings the rhapsode Io to admit this, and to conclude that he is the inspired medium of a magnetic influence. The Muse is the chief magnet, and the poet is the first of a series of magnetic rings. Then follow the rhapsode and the actor, who are rings of inferior power, and the last ring is the hearer or spectator.

The Meno raises again the more serious question, Can virtue be taught? Socrates here states explicitly the paradox with which the Protagoras ended. “Virtue is knowledge; therefore virtue can be taught. But virtue is not taught. Therefore (in the highest sense) there can be no virtue.” And he repeats several of his former reasons—that Athenian

statesmen failed to teach their sons, and that the education given by sophists is unsatisfying. (The sophists are here denounced by Anytus, who is angered by Socrates's ironical praise of them.) But the paradox is softened in two ways: (1) the absence of knowledge does not preclude inquiry, and (2) though virtue cannot be taught, yet there is a sense in which virtue exists.

III. Euthyphro, Apologia, Crito, Phaedo.—There is no ground for supposing that these four dialogues were written consecutively, or that they belong strictly to the same period of Plato's industry. But they are linked together for the reader by their common reference to the trial and death of Socrates; no one of them has been proved to be in the author's earliest or latest manner; and they may therefore fitly end the series of dialogues in which the personal traits of the historic Socrates are most apparent, and Plato's own peculiar doctrines are as yet but partially disclosed.

The little dialogue known by the name of Euthyphro might have been classed with the Laches, Charmides and Lysis, as dealing inconclusively with a single notion. But, although slight and tentative in form, it has an under tone of deeper significance, in keeping with the gravity of the occasion. Plato implies that Socrates had thought more deeply on the nature of piety than his accusers had, and also that his piety was of a higher mood than that of ordinary religious men.