the ironical criticism of Simonides, and are conceived in a similar spirit.
The affinity of the Protagoras to the Meno is more doubtful. For there,
although the same question is discussed, 'whether virtue can be taught,'
and the relation of Meno to the Sophists is much the same as that of
Hippocrates, the answer to the question is supplied out of the doctrine of
ideas; the real Socrates is already passing into the Platonic one. At a
later stage of the Platonic philosophy we shall find that both the paradox
and the solution of it appear to have been retracted. The Phaedo, the
Gorgias, and the Philebus offer further corrections of the teaching of the
Protagoras; in all of them the doctrine that virtue is pleasure, or that
pleasure is the chief or only good, is distinctly renounced.

Thus after many preparations and oppositions, both of the characters of men
and aspects of the truth, especially of the popular and philosophical
aspect; and after many interruptions and detentions by the way, which, as
Theodorus says in the Theaetetus, are quite as agreeable as the argument,
we arrive at the great Socratic thesis that virtue is knowledge. This is
an aspect of the truth which was lost almost as soon as it was found; and
yet has to be recovered by every one for himself who would pass the limits
of proverbial and popular philosophy. The moral and intellectual are
always dividing, yet they must be reunited, and in the highest conception
of them are inseparable. The thesis of Socrates is not merely a hasty
assumption, but may be also deemed an anticipation of some 'metaphysic of
the future,' in which the divided elements of human nature are reconciled.


PROTAGORAS

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