"meno" - читать интересную книгу автора (Plato)

compelled, as you said yesterday, to go away before the mysteries.

Men. But I will stay, Socrates, if you will give me many such
answers.

Soc. Well then, for my own sake as well as for yours, I will do my
very best; but I am afraid that I shall not be able to give you very
many as good: and now, in your turn, you are to fulfil your promise,
and tell me what virtue is in the universal; and do not make a
singular into a plural, as the facetious say of those who break a
thing, but deliver virtue to me whole and sound, and not broken into a
number of pieces: I have given you the pattern.

Men. Well then, Socrates, virtue, as I take it, is when he, who
desires the honourable, is able to provide it for himself; so the poet
says, and I say too-

Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the power of
attaining them.

Soc. And does he who desires the honourable also desire the good?

Men. Certainly.

Soc. Then are there some who desire the evil and others who desire
the good? Do not all men, my dear sir, desire good?

Men. I think not.

Soc. There are some who desire evil?

Men. Yes.

Soc. Do you mean that they think the evils which they desire, to
be good; or do they know that they are evil and yet desire them?

Men. Both, I think.

Soc. And do you really imagine, Meno, that a man knows evils to be
evils and desires them notwithstanding?

Men. Certainly I do.

Soc. And desire is of possession?

Men. Yes, of possession.

Soc. And does he think that the evils will do good to him who
possesses them, or does he know that they will do him harm?