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The same result also appears when we look to what is, or seems to be, accidental matter; for in the Menon this is throughout so identical with what we find in those dialogues, that we are compelled to infer from them the existence of still further similar relations and connecting circumstances. The same use of mathematics for examples as in the Theætetus, nay, even the object selected in visible connection with that dialogue. For the problem which is the foundation of the Pythagorean theorem, to find the side of the double square, is precisely the instance in which the incommensurability of two lines with one another was most immediately, and certainly also first, made palpable. This consistency in the matter from which the examples are taken can be so little the result of accident, that we might rather be tempted by it to attribute to the example itself a still higher symbolical value; especially if we remember that Plato is in the habit of introducing remembrances into his works for the hearers of his immediate oral instructions. This however might remain for ever nothing but a weak supposition, or perhaps be altogether precipitate and false; but clearly this application of these subjects, which no where else appears so prominently, points to the fact, that during the composition of the two dialogues Plato was employed upon the same subject, whether it were more in a mathematical or a Pythagorean point of view. Again, the examples which occur in the Menon taken from natural philosophy are most manifestly connected with what is adduced in the Theætetus in illustration of the doctrine of Protagoras, and is intended defensively to show that Socrates did really there bring forward the doctrines of that school in the sense in which the master of it meant them. And Gorgias as a disciple of Empedocles is here expressly associated with the Pythagoreans, and moreover, attention is thus drawn to the inward connection between the dialogue which bears his name and the Theætetus. In like manner the Menon connects itself with both dialogues by the similarity of its polemics. For the allusion to Aristippus, the bosom friend of rich tyrants cannot be mistaken, when Menon the friend of the great king declares that virtue consists in the compilation of wealth, even when he makes the limitation, not, according to Xenophon’s description, consistent with his own opinions, that this should only be done by legitimate methods. In like manner every reader will think of Antisthenes where it is conceded somewhat contemptuously by all and repeatedly asseverated, that a sophist cannot teach virtue, for Antisthenes maintained the positive side in a sense which did not meet Plato’s views, and where his first master Gorgias is held up to him as a pattern of one who made no claims to this. Moreover the Menon has in common with the Theætetus and Gorgias a similar allusion to the accusation of Socrates. For as in the Theætetus express and somewhat gratuitous mention is made of it, and in the Gorgias it is almost prophesied, and in both dialogues much from the Apology recurs in a very remarkable manner, so here the future accuser himself appears, and we see his anger rise exactly as Socrates describes it in the Apology; and these allusions are found in so similar a dress that manifestly a similar occasion lies at the bottom of them in this dialogue as in the two others, and the Menon falls coincidently into the same period with those dialogues. And this dialogue connects itself with the Gorgias still further, and more particularly by what Socrates extracts by questions from Anytus, and says himself about the Athenian statesmen. For Plato assumes the appearance of changing into a more favourable opinion what he had maintained in the Gorgias; but he does this apparently only, and with a sufficient quantity of irony which at the end rings out clearly enough. It seems, indeed, to be a regular apologetic recantation with which Socrates presents them, intended to convey that there have always been among the politicians of Athens many honourable and just men, and that he would here only maintain that their virtue did not rest upon knowledge, and that this was the cause why they could not also teach and communicate, and this explanation seems all the more powerful as Socrates now comprehends under the sentence, in this its milder application, even Aristides himself, whom he had before exalted so far above the rest. But this man, whom as far as communication is concerned he was certainly compelled to give up, remains nevertheless free from the other objections of which no further mention is here made, and the possibility of his so remaining is founded upon the principle that there may be men in whom the correct conception which they once have continues unchangeable; and it is precisely this which is laid down as the true value of that virtue which is not accompanied by a perfectly finished reason, and consequently does not rest upon knowledge properly so called. The rest, on the other hand, of whom it has been already shown elsewhere that they cannot keep possession of the useful, are, with their true conception, which will not remain without knowledge, most gently merged into the same class with soothsayers and poets, and it is at last distinctly declared what was meant by this elsewhere, namely, that all these men are but as shadows to one, if such there be, who knows and can teach.
This leads of itself to a still further resemblance between the Menon and the Gorgias. For in the latter we found explanatory references to several earlier dialogues; and it may be said of the Menon that it touches upon almost all in the first series, and concludes and seals in so many words a large share of their common subject-matter of which the decision was as it were still left open. This holds especially of the Protagoras and the dialogues immediately connected with it, and on account of this relation much matter is again taken up, almost too literally and too fully, out of the Protagoras, which already lay at too great a distance to admit of Plato’s referring to it only by one or two slight allusions. It is now shown here how much of the virtues remains, as they are ordinarily enumerated, and are no longer allowed to be comprehended in a unity of virtue, if we separate them from knowledge; and at the same time the whole dispute, in which, in the Protagoras, Socrates is not only engaged with Protagoras, but also each of the two with himself as to the identification of virtue with knowledge, and the possibility of communicating it, is solved by the preliminarily established distinction between knowledge and true conception. And in doing this it is said that the more exalted species of virtue rests certainly upon knowledge, though upon a higher mode of it than that calculation of the pleasant, and is moreover thus communicable in the sense in which it may be said generally that remembrancing, and the excitement and reanimation of ideas, is communication; while the ordinary political ἀρετή is not communicable, but rests for the most part only upon correct conception, upon a feeling which has never penetrated up to the point of true knowledge. If therefore, in consequence of what was first remarked, the Menon is indispensable to us as a strengthening key-stone of the dialogues which form the beginning of the second series, so it is also from those references indispensable as a key to much not yet expressly solved in the first series.
Again, a slight degree of attention will show us that the Menon thus becomes a fresh confirmation of the arrangement hitherto pursued in general. For that it solves the riddle of the Protagoras, and, not to go beyond what is particularly mentioned, that of the Laches also, and that hence those two dialogues must be placed before the Menon and in connexion with one another, is clear to every one, and no intelligent reader will think of inverting the relation and saying that those dialogues were later in point of composition, and intended to be further continuations of what is here preliminarily said. The same is true of the Phædrus, to which dialogue sufficiently decided reference is made by a resemblance in the diction, which, though without anything like verbal coincidence, strikes us almost as an enlargement upon that dialogue, though without any abrupt deviation being admitted from the very differently pitched tone of this. Here too, no one on comparison of two passages will find it possible to entertain any view except that the Menon refers retrospectively to the Phædrus. Otherwise we shall be obliged to conclude that he is resolved to recognise no relation whatever between the mythical and philosophical method of exposition, and intentionally to overlook what is struggling to show itself spontaneously. This is the view which we obtain from the somewhat complicated relations of this dialogue, after placing ourselves upon that chief and corner-point from which alone an accurate survey of the whole can be made. Thus prepared, we shall find it no difficult matter to judge how the case may stand with two other views very different from this. Of these views one had not up to a certain time been even published, but only circulated in private by learned men in some respects entitled to much attention. It might however be produced under a form which should give it a certain degree of probability, in my opinion, that is a far better one than that under which Ast lately produced it. This view undertakes to deny our dialogue to Plato, conceiving that it contains but little philosophical matter, not more precisely and better stated elsewhere, that it may therefore be almost dispensed with for the understanding of the Platonic philosophy, and is not moreover in respect of arrangement and treatment of the subject particularly worthy of Plato. And certainly whoever, from not having considered the dialogue in the proper connection, has convinced himself of the first point may easily find many particulars to corroborate the second, which will necessarily strike him the more in proportion as he has less understanding of the whole. For instance, the abrupt commencement without any introduction is not very Platonic, and an introduction seemed here the more necessary as we learn for the first time, and quite unexpectedly in the middle of the dialogue, that Anytus has been present from the beginning—a thing which occurs no where else in Plato. Moreover, it is only by an introduction that the turn could be justified upon which the last part of the dialogue rests, that Menon is in want of a teacher in civil virtue; for we are not prepared for this by anything in the dialogue. Again, several harsh transitions and disproportionate strides in the progress of the dialogue seem only capable of being explained upon the supposition of some precipitate impetuosity in the characters of the speakers, which however no where comes out in the dramatic representation of them; and the resemblance to the Phædrus and Protagoras might seem nothing but mediocre imitation, the rather as it can scarcely be conceived upon what principle Plato could have found himself compelled to do a second time what he had already before discovered the fruitlessness of, I mean, enquiring after a quality of virtue, whether, that is, it is communicable or not, before investigating its nature. But of all these objections no part will remain good in the estimation of one who has rightly apprehended the philosophical bearing of the dialogue, except that, with us, he will consider the Menon as one of the more careless and not perfectly finished expositions of Plato. For, this granted, all particular objections shrink and partially vanish, as they agree almost universally with the manifold subordinate views of the dialogue which we have pointed out, and some negligence in the execution of details is to be looked upon with indulgence, the rather as it is probable that the larger works which follow in connection with the Theætetus were already floating before him in his mind and he hastened to close with them. And truly nothing is more strange than to desire that all the works even of a great master should be possessed of similar perfection, or to suppose that he cannot have produced those that are not so. On the other hand, as to the objection that this dialogue contains a kind of investigation which we shall look for in vain elsewhere, this is not after all so fatal to the cause. For by the assumption that virtue can only be communicable when and in so far as it is identical with knowledge, the question becomes part of the original one, what virtue is or is not in itself. And as to what Ast otherwise calls the un-Platonic propositions of our dialogue, his objection is in part tantamount to this, that he is unable to recognize throughout that simply preparatory character of the dialogue which prevails over the larger portion of the subject matter, and then that he will not allow Plato to use words in different dialogues sometimes in a more limited, sometimes in a more extended sense, and in some of them more scientifically, in others more in the manner of common life. Had it pleased him to allow this, he could not have indulged in such severe censures upon the point that the virtue here spoken of is separated from φρόνησις, and it would not have escaped him that it is precisely the distinction between political virtue and virtue in a higher sense that is here to be started. All other objections give way partly from what has been adduced, and in part appear to me to deserve no particular notice; where so much is undeniably excellent and Platonic, and we may confidently affirm that it would be impossible ever to discover any other probable composer of it.
The other view different from our own and opposed to it in a different manner, is that well known one which attributes to the Menon an important and distinguished value, because it is supposed to be a noble exercise in the doctrine of reason as it is called, and moreover the Socratic midwifery is practised in it with particular adroitness, and supposing it to be first intelligently prepared, much that is beautiful might be demonstrated out of it to little boys in school. Only it is a pity that Plato was not in the habit of producing exercises in logic at all, such things being rather to be found in the later compilation of little dialogues that were foisted upon him, and that if he does here seem to represent anything himself under this form, this is only done in order to disguise to a certain degree the introduction, subservient to quite different purposes, of a foreign ingredient. Pity also that we find in the more artificial dialogues far more artificial and fruitful examples of his midwifery according to the ideas which he himself lays down in the Theætetus; and he declares this to be only the first commencement of bringing conceptions to consciousness, and does moreover treat somewhat lightly the merits of mathematical elements in comparison with philosophical, upon which he is generally accustomed to exercise this art. Pity, lastly, that it is not quite so easy a matter to prepare and demonstrate this very dialogue of the Menon essentially and entirely, as has been done with particular fragments detached from it, but which then are not themselves understood in their relation to the whole. Hence again, these panegyrists are themselves involved in a learned dispute as to what may really be the opinion of Plato upon the communicability of virtue, whether he is indeed in earnest with the whole question, and whether the decision come to, that it is only attainable by divine inspiration, coincides with other expressed sentiments of the philosopher. And among the disputants are many so truly divine, that whatever they are to understand must come from divine inspiration, and that because they have taken upon themselves to consider for itself alone what depends upon something else, and they require not only a voice to warn them, but one to call upon and awaken them to hear when the author imparts the answers to their sapient questions. For had they but understood his voice themselves they would have given better attention to three passages, to the way in which he states the first question as to whether virtue is knowledge or something quite distinct and separate from it, and then to the limitation that in political ἀρετή, right conception may supply the place of knowledge, and finally to the last sentiments about the true statesman.
As to the persons, Anytus the accuser of Socrates is not, as far as I know, mentioned either by Plato or Xenophon with his father’s name. Diogenes and Athenæus consider the Anytus of this dialogue and the accuser of Socrates as one and the same, and generally the way in which he is here brought forward speaks too clearly in favour of the supposition that Plato had him in his mind to render it necessary to look for other vouchers. Hence, therefore, it is not necessary to inquire who the numerous authors can be in whose writings it was found stated that the accuser of Socrates was a son of Anthemion. Menon is unquestionably the same with him whom Xenophon mentions in the campaign of Cyrus, although Plato does not describe him as so abandoned a profligate. His country, his beauty, his wealth and the friendship of the Thessalian Aristippus, who cannot be supposed to be also a duplicate, are circumstances sufficiently material and to the purpose to establish the fact.