This Dialogue is an attempt to answer the question, Can virtue be taught?
There may be some trace of irony in this curious passage, which forms the concluding portion of the Dialogue. But Plato certainly does not mean to intimate that the supernatural or divine is the true basis of human life.
This Dialogue contains the first intimation of the doctrine of reminiscence and of the immortality of the soul.
Some lesser points of the dialogue may be noted, such as (1) the acute observation that Meno prefers the familiar definition, which is embellished with poetical language, to the better and truer one; or (2) the shrewd reflection, which may admit of an application to modern as well as to ancient teachers, that the Sophists having made large fortunes; this must surely be a criterion of their powers of teaching, for that no man could get a living by shoemaking who was not a good shoemaker; or (3) the remark conveyed, almost in a word, that the verbal sceptic is saved the labour of thought and enquiry (ouden dei to toiouto zeteseos).
Or he may have been regardless of the historical truth of the characters of his dialogue, as in the case of Meno and Critias.
"Yes," assented Emma Jane, "it is, of course; with your name on the board, and our pointing to your flag, and our elergant dialogue, and all that."
Friday afternoon was always the time chosen for dialogues, songs, and recitations, but it cannot be stated that it was a gala day in any true sense of the word.
The moral which I gained from the
dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder.
Mrs Deborah approved all these sentiments, and the
dialogue concluded with a general and bitter invective against beauty, and with many compassionate considerations for all honest plain girls who are deluded by the wicked arts of deceitful men.
But not so much as her cynicism in the long
dialogue with her lover which followed.
Without appearing to have heard the
dialogue, of which she had not lost a word, she began again, giving to her voice all the charm, all the power, all the seduction the demon had bestowed upon it:
Good night t'ye!" one of them was saying: and so the whole
dialogue was repeated, and, when they had parted for the second time, I let them go their several ways, and strolled on through the town.
(and reported to her mother) a little conjugal
dialogue which touched on the topic of The Haunted Hotel.
Every other Friday afternoon she has recitations and everybody has to say a piece or take part in a
dialogue. Oh, it's just glorious to think of it.
For there is no common term we could apply to the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic
dialogues on the one hand; and, on the other, to poetic imitations in iambic, elegiac, or any similar metre.
