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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: of talking with him, and the suggestion that Meno may do the Athenian
people a service by pacifying him, are evident allusions to the trial of
Socrates.
Socrates returns to the consideration of the question 'whether virtue is
teachable,' which was denied on the ground that there are no teachers of
it: (for the Sophists are bad teachers, and the rest of the world do not
profess to teach). But there is another point which we failed to observe,
and in which Gorgias has never instructed Meno, nor Prodicus Socrates.
This is the nature of right opinion. For virtue may be under the guidance
of right opinion as well as of knowledge; and right opinion is for
practical purposes as good as knowledge, but is incapable of being taught,
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