[9] Plato, Menon, p. 74 D.
[10] Plato, Menon, c. 7, pp. 74-75. Πειρῶ εἰπεῖν, ἵνα καὶ γένηταί σοι μελέτη πρὸς τὴν περὶ τῆς ἀρετῆς ἀπόκρισιν (75 A).
The purpose of practising the respondent is here distinctly announced.
[11] Plato, Menon, p. 75 C-E.
Importance at that time of bringing into conscious view, logical subordination and distinctions — Neither logic nor grammar had then been cast into system.
All this preliminary matter seems to be intended for the purpose of getting the question clearly conceived as a general question — of exhibiting and eliminating the narrow and partial conceptions which unconsciously substitute themselves in the mind, in place of that which ought to be conceived as a generic whole — and of clearing up what is required in a good definition. A generic whole, including various specific portions distinguishable from each other, was at that time little understood by any one. There existed no grammar, nor any rules of logic founded on analysis of the intellectual processes. To predicate of the genus what was true only of the species — to predicate as distinctively characterizing the species, what is true of the whole genus in which it is contained — to lose the integrity of the genus in its separate parcels or fragments[12] — these were errors which men had never yet been expressly taught to avoid. To assign the one common meaning, constituent of or connoted by a generic term, had never yet been put before them as a problem. Such preliminary clearing of the ground is instructive even now, when formal and systematic logic has become more or less familiar: but in the time of Plato, it must have been indispensably required, to arrive at a full conception of any general question.[13]
[12] Plato, Menon, p. 79 A. ἐμοῦ δεηθέντος σου μὴ καταγνύμαι μηδὲ κερματίζειν τὴν ἀρετην, &c. 79 B: ἐμοῦ δεηθέντος ὅλην εἰπεῖν τὴν ἀρετήν, &c.
[13] These examples of trial, error, and exposure, have great value and reflect high credit on Plato, when we regard them as an intellectual or propædeutic discipline, forcing upon hearers an attention to useful logical distinctions at a time when there existed no systematic grammar or logic. But surely they must appear degraded, as they are presented in the Prolegomena of Stallbaum, and by some other critics. We are there told that Plato’s main purpose in this dialogue was to mock and jeer the Sophists and their pupil, and that for this purpose Sokrates is made to employ not his own arguments but arguments borrowed from the Sophists themselves — “ut callidé suam ipsius rationem occultare existimandus sit, quo magis illudat Sophistarum alumnum” (p. 15). “Quæ quidem argumentatio” (that of Sokrates) “admodum cavendum est ne pro Socraticâ vel Platonicâ accipiatur. Est enim prorsus ad mentem Sophistarum aliorumque id genus hominum comparata,” &c. (p. 16). Compare pp. 12-13 seq.
The Sophists undoubtedly had no distinct consciousness, any more than other persons, of these logical distinctions, which were then for the first pressed forcibly upon attention.
Definition of virtue given by Menon: Sokrates pulls it to pieces.