ot argue
from the customary use of names, which the vulgar pervert in all manner
of ways. If you are gentle to an adversary he will follow and love you;
and if defeated he will lay the blame on himself, and seek to escape
from his own prejudices into philosophy. I would recommend you,
Socrates, to adopt this humaner method, and to avoid captious and verbal
criticisms.'

Such, Theodorus, is the very slight help which I am able to afford to
your friend; had he been alive, he would have helped himself in far
better style.

'You have made a most valorous defence.'

Yes; but did you observe that Protagoras bade me be serious, and
complained of our getting up a laugh against him with the aid of a boy?
He meant to intimate that you must take the place of Theaetetus, who may
be wiser than many bearded men, but not wiser than you, Theodorus.

'The rule of the Spartan Palaestra is, Strip or depart; but you are like
the giant Antaeus, and will not let me depart unless I try a fall with
you.'

Yes, that is the nature of my complaint. And many a Hercules, many a
Theseus mighty in deeds and words has broken my head; but I am always at
this rough game. Please, then, to favour me.

'On the condition of not exceeding a single fall, I consent.'

Socrates now resumes the argument. As he is very desirous of doing
justice to Protagoras, he insists on citing his own words,--'What
appears to each man is to him.' And how, asks Socrates, are these words
reconcileable with the fact that all mankind are agreed in thinking
themselves wiser than others in some respects, and inferior to them in
others? In the hour of danger they are ready to fall down and worship
any one who is their superior in wisdom as if he were a god. And the
world is full of men who are asking to be taught and willing to be
ruled, and of other men who are willing to rule and teach them. All
which implies that men do judge of one another's impressions, and think
some wise and others foolish. How will Protagoras answer this argument?
For he cannot say that no one deems another ignorant or mistaken. If you
form a judgment, thousands and tens of thousands are ready to maintain
the opposite. The multitude may not and do not agree in Protagoras'
own thesis that 'Man is the measure of all things;' and then who is to
decide? Upon his own showing must not his 'truth' depend on the number
of suffrages, and be more or less true in proportion as he has more or
fewer of them? And