may be taught; he punishes certainly for the sake of deterring from wickedness. 40. All, therefore, have this opinion who inflict punishment, either privately or publicly. Now all other men, and especially the Athenians, your fellow-citizens, inflict punishment on and correct those who they think act unjustly; so that, according to this reasoning, the Athenians also are among the number of those who think that virtue may be acquired and taught. That your fellow-citizens, therefore, very properly allow a brazier and a shoemaker to give advice in political affairs, and that they think that virtue may be taught and acquired, has been sufficiently demonstrated to you, Socrates, at least as it appears to me. 41. “There still, however, remains a doubt which you entertain respecting those good men, why, in the world they have their sons instructed in such things as depend on masters, and make them wise, but in the virtue which they themselves possess do not make them better than others. With respect to this, then, Socrates, I shall no longer speak to you in fable, but argument. For consider the matter thus. Whether is there some one thing or not, of which it is necessary all the citizens should partake, if a city is to be? for in this or in no other way, the doubt which you entertain is solved. For if there is, and if this one thing is neither the art of a builder, nor of a brazier, nor of a potter, but is justice, and temperance, and holiness, and in a word I call it by one name, the virtue of a man; if this be the thing, of which all must partake, and with which every man if he wishes to learn or do any thing else, must _learn or_ do it, but not without this, or if one who does not partake of it must be taught and punished, whether boy, or man, or woman, till through being punished he becomes better, and he who is not obedient, when punished or taught, is to be banished from cities, or put to death as incurable; if this is the case, and if, notwithstanding this, good men teach their children other things, but not this, consider what strange people those good men are: 42. for we have shewn that they think it may be taught, both privately and publicly. But since it may be taught, and acquired by study, do they teach their children other things, for which death is not imposed as a penalty, if they do not know them; but where the penalty of death or exile is imposed on their children, if they are not instructed or exercised in virtue, and besides death, the confiscation of their property, and in short the ruin of their families, _do you think that_ they do not teach them these things nor bestow their whole care upon them? We must think they do, Socrates.