Meno: I did say so.
Socrates: And can either house or state or anything be well ordered without temperance and without justice?
Meno: Certainly not.
Socrates: Then they who order a state or a house temperately or justly order them with temperance and justice?
Meno: Certainly.
Socrates: Then both men and women, if they are to be good men and women, must have the same virtues of temperance and justice?
Meno: True.
Socrates: And can either a young man or an elder one be good, if they are intemperate and unjust?
Meno: They cannot.
Socrates: They must be temperate and just?
Meno: Yes.
Socrates: Then all men are good in the same way, and by participation in the same virtues?
Meno: Such is the inference.
Socrates: And they surely would not have been good in the same way, unless their virtue had been the same?
Meno: They would not.
Socrates: Then now that the sameness of all virtue has been proven, try and remember what you and Gorgias say that virtue is.
Meno: Will you have one definition of them all?
Socrates: That is what I am seeking.
Meno: If you want to have one definition of them all, I know not what to say, but that virtue is the power of governing mankind.
Socrates: And does this definition of virtue include all virtue? Is virtue the same in a child and in a slave, Meno? Can the child govern his father, or the slave his master; and would he who governed be any longer a slave?
Meno: I think not, Socrates.
Socrates: No, indeed; there would be small reason in that. Yet once more, fair friend; according to you, virtue is “the power of governing”; but do you not add “justly and not unjustly”?
Meno: Yes, Socrates; I agree there; for justice is virtue.
Socrates: Would you say “virtue,” Meno, or “a virtue”?
Meno: What do you mean?