 Socrates seems to assume in these works that knowledge of definitions has priority in two ways: (1) One must know what reverence is before one could know of any particular action that it is reverent (whether, for example, it is reverent to prosecute one’s father), and so for the other virtues and other cases. (2) One must know what reverence is before one could know what properties reverence has (for example, whether it is teachable). The first of these has been attacked as the Socratic fallacy by Peter Geach (on which see Prior 1998); Socrates himself seems to think he knows things which he appears to be unable to support through giving definitions. Luckily, no text unequivocally assigns either claim to Socrates, and the matter is under debate. A charitable view would assign to Socrates in place of (1) the view that only expert knowledge on the model of  techne  requires the ability to give definitions, and in place of (2) the view that we cannot know what the essential features of something are until we know its essence.