And what struck him, in contrast to the confusion and uncertainty and isolation of the sophistic teaching 'in the air,' was that when you get a man to talk on his own trade, which he _knows_, as is proved by the actual work he produces, you find invariably two {110} things--_first_, that the skill is the man's _individual_ possession no doubt, the result of inborn capacity and continuous training and practice; but _second_, that just in proportion to that individual skill is the man's conviction that his skill has reference to a _law_ higher than himself, outside himself. If the man whom Socrates interviewed was a skilful statesman, he would tell you he sought to produce obedience to _law_ or right among 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.