protagoras   

prevention, thereby clearly implying that virtue is capable of being

taught. This is the notion of all who retaliate upon others either

privately or publicly. And the Athenians, too, your own citizens, like

other men, punish and take vengeance on all whom they regard as evil

doers; and hence, we may infer them to be of the number of those who

think that virtue may be acquired and taught. Thus far, Socrates, I

have shown you clearly enough, if I am not mistaken, that your

countrymen are right in admitting the tinker and the cobbler to advise

about politics, and also that they deem virtue to be capable of

being taught and acquired.

There yet remains one difficulty which has been raised by you

about the sons of good men. What is the reason why good men teach

their sons the knowledge which is gained from teachers, and make

them wise in that, but do nothing towards improving them in the

virtues which distinguish themselves? And here, Socrates, I will leave

the apologue and resume the argument. Please to consider: Is there

or is there not some one quality of which all the citizens must be

partakers, if there is to be a city at all? In the answer to this

question is contained the only solution of your difficulty; there is

no other. For if there be any such quality, and this quality or

unity is not the art of the carpenter, or the smith, or the potter,

but justice and temperance and holiness and, in a word, manly

virtue-if this is the quality of which all men must be partakers,

and which is the very condition of their learning or doing anything

else, and if he who is wanting in this, whether he be a child only

or a grown-up man or woman, must be taught and punished, until by

punishment he becomes better, and he who rebels against instruction

and punishment is either exiled or condemned to death under the idea

that he is incurable-if what I am saying be true, good men have

their sons taught other things and not this, do consider how

extraordinary their conduct would appear to be. For we have shown that

they think virtue capable of being taught and cultivated both in