S. “But, beautiful youth, before I can do that, you will have spoken your oration on the bema, and all the people will be ready and able to say ‘Absurd! Nothing but what is fair can come from so fair a body.’ Come, let us consider the question together.”
I assented willingly; and Alcibiades, mincing and pouting, after his fashion, still was loath to refuse.
S. “Let us see, then. Alcibiades distinguishes, he says, between objective fact and subjective opinion?”
A. “Of course I do.”
S. “But not, I presume, between objective truth and subjective truth, whereof Protagoras spoke?”
A. “What trap are you laying now? I distinguish between them also, of course.”
S. “Tell me, then, dear youth, of your indulgence, what they are; for I am shamefully ignorant on the matter.”
A. “Why, do they not call a thing objectively true, when it is true absolutely in itself; but subjectively true, when it is true in the belief of a particular person?”
S. “—Though not necessarily true objectively, that is, absolutely and in itself?”
A. “No.”