being the attention paid to virtue, privately and publicly, do you wonder and doubt, Socrates, whether virtue may be taught? There is no need, however, to wonder, but much more if it could not be taught. “Why then are there many bad sons of good fathers? Learn again the reason of this; for it is not at all wonderful, if what I have before said is true, that, if a state is to subsist, no one must be unskilled in this thing, virtue. For if what I say is the case, (and it assuredly is), consider the matter by selecting any other study and subject of instruction whatever. 46. For instance, suppose that a city could not subsist unless we were all of us flute-players, each according to his capacity, and suppose every one should teach his neighbour, both privately and publicly, and should chide any one who did not play well, and should not grudge doing this, as now no one grudges _a knowledge of_ what is just and legal, or conceals it, as is the case in other arts, for mutual justice and virtue are, I think, advantageous to us; and for this reason every one most willingly tells and teaches others what is just and legal. If then in the same way, in flute-playing, we had a perfectly willing and ungrudging disposition to teach each other, do you think, Socrates,” said he, “that the sons of good flute-players would become good players, rather than the sons of bad ones? I indeed think not; but the man’s son who happened to have the best natural talent for flute-playing, would rise to distinction; and the man’s son who had no such natural talent, would be undistinguished; and the son of a good flute-player would often turn out a bad one, and the son of a bad one would often turn out a good one. However, all would be sufficiently good flute-players, compared with those who are untaught, and who know nothing of flute-playing. 47. In like manner think that the man who appears to you to be the most unjust of those who are trained in the laws, and among civilized men, is just and a proficient in justice, when compared with men, who have neither instruction nor courts of justice, nor laws, nor any necessity that constantly compels them to attend to virtue, but may be considered as savages, such as those whom the poet Pherecrates represented last year, at the Lenæan festival. Assuredly, if you should chance to be thrown among such men as the misanthropes in that play, you would rejoice if you met with a Eurybates and a Phrynondas[96], and you would deplore with regret the depravity of the men here. But now you are fastidious, Socrates, because all are teachers of virtue as far as they are severally able, though no one appears to you to be so. Again, if you were to enquire for a teacher of the Greek language, not one would be found: nor, I think, if you were to enquire for one who could instruct the sons of our artificers in the very art which they have learnt from their father, so far as the father and the