question, which if you will only answer, I shall be quite satisfied. You
were saying that virtue can be taught;--that I will take upon your
authority, and there is no one to whom I am more ready to trust. But I
marvel at one thing about which I should like to have my mind set at rest.
You were speaking of Zeus sending justice and reverence to men; and several
times while you were speaking, justice, and temperance, and holiness, and
all these qualities, were described by you as if together they made up
virtue. Now I want you to tell me truly whether virtue is one whole, of
which justice and temperance and holiness are parts; or whether all these
are only the names of one and the same thing: that is the doubt which
still lingers in my mind.

There is no difficulty, Socrates, in answering that the qualities of which
you are speaking are the parts of virtue which is one.

And are they parts, I said, in the same sense in which mouth, nose, and
eyes, and ears, are the parts of a face; or are they like the parts of
gold, which differ from the whole and from one another only in being larger
or smaller?

I should say that they differed, Socrates, in the first way; they are
related to one another as the parts of a face are related to the whole
face.

And do men have some one part and some another part of virtue? Or if a man
has one part, must he also have all the others?

By no means, he said; for many a man is brave and not just, or just and not
wise.