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Menon the Thessalian, a person who had no mean
opinion of his own parts, who thought himself well accomplished in all the arts of discourse and to have reached (as
Empedocles words it) the highest pitch of wisdom, was
asked by Socrates, What is virtue? And he answered
readily enough, and as impertinently, that there is one
virtue belonging to childhood, another to old age; that
there are distinct virtues in men and women, magistrates
and private persons, masters and servants. Excellently
well! replied Socrates in raillery, when you were asked
about one virtue, you have raised, as it were, a whole
swarm; conjecturing, not without reason, that the man
therefore named many because he knew the nature of
none. And may not we ourselves expect and deserve as
justly to be scoffed and rallied, who having not yet contracted one firm friendship seem nevertheless exceeding
cautious of too many? It is almost the same thing as if
one maimed and blind should appear solicitous lest like
Briareus he may chance to be furnished with a hundred
hands, and become all over eyes like Argus. However,
we cannot but extol the sense of that young man in Menander the poet, who said that he counted every man
wonderfully honest and happy who had found even the
shadow of a friend.
[p. 465]
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