The Complete Works of Plato

virtue, as I take it, is when

he, who desires the honourable, is able to provide it for himself; so the poet says, and I say too—

‘Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the power of attaining them.’

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 all.