At the beginning of Plato's Meno, the shrewd Meno asks Socrates, "Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?" As Socrates and Meno debate the nature of virtue, Socrates introduces his theory of recollection. Socrates offers this theory to refute Meno's contentious argument, which roughly states, "If I know that for which I am searching, then I am truly searching, but if I do not know that for which I search, how do I...