“We were discussing,” said I, “that very thing for which we found you praying-namely, truth, and what it might be.”

“Perhaps you went a worse way toward discovering it than I did.  But let us hear.  Whence did the discussion arise?”

“From something,” said Alcibiades, “which Protagoras said in his lecture yesterday-How truth was what each man troweth, or believeth, to be true.  ‘So that,’ he said, ’one thing is true to me, if I believe it true, and another opposite thing to you, if you believe that opposite.  For,’ continued he, ’there is an objective and a subjective truth; the former, doubtless, one and absolute, and contained in the nature of each thing; but the other manifold and relative, varying with the faculties of each perceiver thereof.’  But as each man’s faculties, he said, were different from his neighbour’s, and all more or less imperfect, it was impossible that the absolute objective truth of anything could be seen by any mortal, but only some partial approximation, and, as it were, sketch of it, according as the object was represented with more or less refraction on the mirror of his subjectivity.  And therefore, as the true inquirer deals only with the possible, and lets the impossible go, it was the business of the wise man, shunning the search after absolute truth as an impious attempt of the Titans to scale Olympus, to busy himself humbly and practically with subjective truth, and with those methods-rhetoric, for instance-by which he can make the subjective opinions of others either similar to his own, or, leaving them as they are-for it may be very often unnecessary to change them-useful to his own ends.”

Then Socrates, laughing: 

“My fine fellow, you will have made more than one oration in the Pnyx to-day.  And indeed, I myself felt quite exalted, and rapt aloft, like Bellerophon on Pegasus, upon the eloquence of Protagoras and you.  But yet forgive me this one thing; for my mother bare me, as you know, a man-midwife, after her own trade, and not a sage.”

Alcibiades.  “What then?”

Socrates.  “This, my astonishing friend-for really I am altogether astonished and struck dumb, as I always am whensoever I hear a brilliant talker like you discourse concerning objectivities and subjectivities, and such mysterious words; at such moments I am like an old war-horse, who, though he will rush on levelled lances, shudders and sweats with terror at a boy rattling pebbles in a bladder; and I feel altogether dizzy, and dread lest I should suffer some such transformation as Scylla, when I hear awful words, like incantations, pronounced over me, of which I, being no sage, understand nothing.  But tell me now, Alcibiades, did the opinion of Protagoras altogether please you?”

A.  “Why not?  Is it not certain that two equally honest men may differ in their opinions on the same matter?”

S.  “Undeniable.”

A.  “But if each is equally sincere in speaking what he believes, is not each equally moved by the spirit of truth?”