getting of good with a part of virtue. The definition repeats the word
defined.

Meno complains that the conversation of Socrates has the effect of a
torpedo's shock upon him. When he talks with other persons he has plenty
to say about virtue; in the presence of Socrates, his thoughts desert him.
Socrates replies that he is only the cause of perplexity in others, because
he is himself perplexed. He proposes to continue the enquiry. But how,
asks Meno, can he enquire either into what he knows or into what he does
not know? This is a sophistical puzzle, which, as Socrates remarks, saves
a great deal of trouble to him who accepts it. But the puzzle has a real
difficulty latent under it, to which Socrates will endeavour to find a
reply. The difficulty is the origin of knowledge:--

He has heard from priests and priestesses, and from the poet Pindar, of an
immortal soul which is born again and again in successive periods of
existence, returning into this world when she has paid the penalty of
ancient crime, and, having wandered over all places of the upper and under
world, and seen and known all things at one time or other, is by
association out of one thing capable of recovering all. For nature is of
one kindred; and every soul has a seed or germ which may be developed into
all knowledge. The existence of this latent knowledge is further proved by
the interrogation of one of Meno's slaves, who, in the skilful hands of
Socrates, is made to acknowledge some elementary relations of geometrical
figures. The theorem that the square of the diagonal is double the square
of the side--that famous discovery of primitive mathematics, in honour of
which the legendary Pythagoras is said to have sacrificed a hecatomb--is
elicited from him. The first step in the process of teaching has made him
conscious of his own ignorance. He has had the 'torpedo's shock' given
him, and is the better for the operation. But whence had the uneducated