g the citizens; if he was a skilful sculptor, he produced
_beautiful_ things; if he was a skilful handicraftsman, he produced
_useful_ things. Justice, beauty, utility; these three words in
different ways illustrated the existence of something always realising
itself no doubt in individuals and their works, but nevertheless
exercising a governing influence upon these to such a degree that this
ideal something might be conceived as _prior_ to the individual or his
work; or secondly, as _inherent_ in them and giving value to them; or
thirdly, as coming in at the end as the _perfection_ or completion of
them. This law or ideal then had a threefold aspect in its own nature,
being conceivable as Justice, as Beauty, as Utility; it had a threefold
aspect in relation to the works produced in accordance with it, as the
cause _producing_, the cause _inhering_, the cause completing or
_perfecting_.

We may therefore conceive Socrates as arguing thus: "You clever
Sophists, when we let you take {111} us into the region of abstract
talk, have a knack of so playing with words that in the end we don't
seem to know anything for certain, especially on such subjects as we
have hitherto thought the most important, such as God and right and
truth and justice and purity. We seem to be perfectly defenceless
against you; and what is more, any smart youth, whose opinion on any
practical matter no one would think of taking, can very soon pick up
the trick from you, and bewilder plain people really far wiser than
himself by his clever argumentation; all going to prove that there is
nothing certain, nothing real, nothing binding; nothing but opinions
and conventions and conscious or unconscious humbug in the universe.

"But when I go and have a quiet talk with any man who really is a known
master of some craft or skill, about that craft or skill, I find no
doubt whatever existing in his mind about there being a law, a
something absolutely real and beautiful and true in connection with it.
He, on the contrary, lives with no other purpose or hope or desire but
as far as he can to realise in what he works at something of this real
and beautiful and true, which was before him, will be after him, is the
only valuable thing in him, but yet which honours him with the function
of, in his day and generation, expressing it before the eyes of men."

{112} "Have we not here a key to the great secret? If each man, in
respect of that which he knows best b