means to be classed, as you class it,
with the appetites of brutes; much less to be threatened, as you
threaten it, with infinite and eternal misery by I know not what
necessary laws of Zeus, and to be put off at last with some myth or
other about Prometheus. Surely your mother bare you a scoffer and
pitiless, Socrates, and not, as you boast, a man-midwife fit for
fair youths."

Then, smiling sweetly, "Dear boy," said he, "were I such as you
fancy, how should I be here now, discoursing with you concerning
truth, instead of conning my speech for the Pnyx, like Alcibiades,
that I may become a demagogue, deceiving the mob with flattery, and
win for myself houses, and lands, and gold, and slave-girls, and
fame, and power, even to a tyranny itself? For in this way I might
have made my tongue a profitable member of my body; but now, being
hurried up and down in barren places, like one mad of love, from my
longing after fair youths, I waste my speech on them; receiving, as
is the wont of true lovers, only curses and ingratitude from their
arrogance. But tell me, thou proud Adonis-This spirit of truth in
thee, which thou thoughtest, and rightly, thy most noble possession-
did it desire truth, or not?"

P. "But, Socrates, I told you that very thing, and said that it was
a longing after truth, which I could not restrain or disobey."

S. "Tell me now, does one long for that which one possesses, or for
that which one does not possess?"

P. "For that which one does not possess."

S. "And is one in love with that which is oneself, or with that
which is not?"

P. "With that which is not oneself, thou mocker. We are not all,
surely, like Narcissus?"

S. "No, by the dog! not quite all. But see now: it appears that
when any one is in love with a thing, and longs for it, as thou
didst for truth, it must be something which is not himself, and
which he does not possess?"

P. "True."

S. "You, then, while you were loving facts as they are, and longing
to see them as they are, yet did not possess that which you longed
for?"

P. "True, indeed; else why should I have been driven forth by the
anger of the gods, like Bellerophon, to pace the Aleian plain,
eating my own soul, if I had possessed that for which I longed?"

S. "Well said, dear boy. But see again. This truth which you
loved, and which was not yourself or part of yourself, was certainly
also nothing of your own making?-Though they say that Pygmalion w