s on Jane's favourite seat. You shall
discourse, and I, till Lewis brings the luncheon, will smoke my
cigar; and if I seem to be looking at the mountain, don't fancy that
I am only counting how many young grouse those heath-burning
worthies will have left me by the twelfth."

So we sat down, and I began:

PHAETHON

Alcibiades and I walked into the Pnyx early the other morning,
before the people assembled. There we saw Socrates standing, having
his face turned toward the rising sun. Approaching him, we
perceived that he was praying; and that so ardently, that we touched
him on the shoulder before he became aware of our presence.

"You seem like a man filled with the God, Socrates," said
Alcibiades.

"Would that were true," answered he, "both of me and of all who will
counsel here this day. In fact, I was praying for that very thing;
namely, that they might have light to see the truth, in whatsoever
matter might be discussed here."

"And for me also?" said Alcibiades; "but I have prepared my speech
already."

"And for you also, if you desire it-even though some of your periods
should be spoiled thereby. But why are you both here so early,
before any business is stirring?"

"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