The process however of dealing with
all of these, as the mind moves up and down to each in turn, does
after much effort give birth in a well-constituted mind to knowledge
of that which is well constituted. But if a man is ill-constituted
by nature (as the state of the soul is naturally in the majority
both in its capacity for learning and in what is called moral
character)-or it may have become so by deterioration-not even
Lynceus could endow such men with the power of sight.
In one word, the man who has no natural kinship with this matter
cannot be made akin to it by quickness of learning or memory; for it
cannot be engendered at all in natures which are foreign to it.
Therefore, if men are not by nature kinship allied to justice and
all other things that are honourable, though they may be good at
learning and remembering other knowledge of various kinds-or if they
have the kinship but are slow learners and have no memory-none of
all these will ever learn to the full the truth about virtue and vice.
For both must be learnt together; and together also must be learnt, by
complete and long continued study, as I said at the beginning, the
true and the false about all that has real being. After much effort,
as names, definitions, sights, and other data of sense, are brought
into contact and friction one with another, in the course of
scrutiny and kindly testing by men who proceed by question and
answer without ill will, with a sudden flash there shines forth
understanding about every problem, and an intelligence whose efforts
reach the furthest limits of human powers.
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