"How then" (says Meno, acutely) "can you search for that of which you know nothing; and how, even if you find it, can you be sure that you have got it?"
This difficulty Socrates explains by that famous doctrine of Reminiscence, which is so important a principle in the Platonic philosophy. The soul (as the poets say) is immortal, and is continually dying and being born again—passing from one body to another. During these stages of existence, in Hades and in the upper world, it has seen and learnt all things, but has forgotten the greater part of its knowledge. It is capable, however, of reviving by association all that it has learnt—for all nature is akin, and all knowledge and learning is only reminiscence. Socrates then proves his theory by cross-examining a boy—one of Meno's slaves—who gives the successive stages of a problem in geometry; and this implies that the knowledge was already latent in his mind.
Then Socrates goes on to show that knowledge is the distinctive element of virtue, without which all good gifts, such as health, or beauty, or strength, are unprofitable because not rightly used; and if virtue be knowledge, it cannot come by nature, but must be taught.
"But who are its teachers?" he asks, appealing to one of the company, Anytus, afterwards his own accuser: for he has failed, hitherto, to find them. "Shall Meno go to the Sophists—the professed teachers of all Greece?"
"Heaven forbid!" answers Anytus; "the Sophists are the corrupters of our nation. The real teachers are
