ance in different forms in different governments. It is an extension of "Self-Love"—very different from Selfishness,—for a good man (he says) will give up honour and life and lands for his friend's sake, and yet reserve to himself something still more excellent—the glory of a noble deed.[1] But Aristotle can, no more than Plato, give the precise grounds for any friendship, except that it should not be based on pleasure or utility; and we are told of his saying more than once to his pupils, "O my friends, there is no friend!" Perhaps, after all, Montaigne was right—friendship is inexplicable; and the only reason that can be given for liking such a person is the one given by him, "Because it was he, because it was I."
The Meno of Plato, introduced in the Dialogue which bears his name, is a very different character from the Meno of history—a traitor who did his best to embarrass the retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks. Plato represents him as a "Thessalian Alcibiades"—a rich young noble, the devoted pupil of the Sophists. He meets Socrates, and abruptly asks him the old question, whether Virtue can be taught; and Socrates, as usual, professes ignorance. He is not a Gorgias, that he can answer such a question offhand "in the grand style." He does not even know what Virtue is, much less who are its teachers: and he adds, with mock humility, that there is a singular dearth of wisdom at Athens just now, for the rhetoricians have carried it all away with them to Thrace. Perhaps Meno will
- ↑ Ethics, viii. ix.
