As I mentioned in my previous post, the dialogue returns again and again to the question of what virtue is. Here's Meno:
"How will you look for it, Socrates, when you do not know at all what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know?" (Section 80d in the Grube translation)
The demonstration with the slave boy ensues, in which Socrates proves, and Meno accepts, that a slave boy raised in his household is able to work his way through a geometry problem (with what some consider "leading questions" by Socrates), despite having had no formal training in the discipline.
Socrates concludes that universal truths are embedded in the boy's soul, which he has the ability to "recollect."
"Meno's Paradox" is: if we know something, inquiry is unnecessary, however it we don't know something, inquiry is impossible. How will we know the truth if we see it?
Socrates reply: "...I would contend at all costs in both word and deed as far as I could that we will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it." (Section 86b).
In other words: Dare to know.
