them is to be corrected, or, in other words, called to account, which is a
term used not only in your country, but also in many others, seeing that
justice calls men to account. Now when there is all this care about virtue
private and public, why, Socrates, do you still wonder and doubt whether
virtue can be taught? Cease to wonder, for the opposite would be far more
surprising.

But why then do the sons of good fathers often turn out ill? There is
nothing very wonderful in this; for, as I have been saying, the existence
of a state implies that virtue is not any man's private possession. If so
--and nothing can be truer--then I will further ask you to imagine, as an
illustration, some other pursuit or branch of knowledge which may be
assumed equally to be the condition of the existence of a state. Suppose
that there could be no state unless we were all flute-players, as far as
each had the capacity, and everybody was freely teaching everybody the art,
both in private and public, and reproving the bad player as freely and
openly as every man now teaches justice and the laws, not concealing them
as he would conceal the other arts, but imparting them--for all of us have
a mutual interest in the justice and virtue of one another, and this is the
reason why every one is so ready to teach justice and the laws;--suppose, I
say, that there were the same readiness and liberality among us in teaching
one another flute-playing, do you imagine, Socrates, that the sons of good
flute-players would be more likely to be good than the sons of bad ones? I
think not. Would not their sons grow up to be distinguished or
undistinguished according to their own natural capacities as flute-players,
and the son of a good player would often turn out to be a bad one, and the
son of a bad player to be a good one, all flute-players would be good
enough in comparison of those who were ignorant and unacquainted with the
art of flute-playing? In like manner I would have you consider that he who
appears to you to be the worst of those who have been brought up in laws