it, but that when he turns his back upon it, it has _no_ colour, because one of the three conditions, the sight, has been withdrawn. Mr. Jowett seems, however (with the disciples of a modern school), to press this doctrine of relativity too far in asserting (Introd., p. 332), 'There would be no world, if there neither were, nor never had been, any one to perceive the world.' For we cannot escape from the conclusion that the world must have existed (in the sense in which we know of existence) prior to life, _i.e._, any perceptive faculty, being placed upon it. What appears to have struck Plato most strongly in considering the doctrine of Protagoras was this--that if everybody is right, or as right as any other, all reasoning, argument, persuasion, in fine, the whole science of dialectics, becomes _ipso facto_ useless and absurd (p. 161, E.) There are no such characters as _wise_ and _foolish_. Protagoras himself felt the difficulty, but evaded it thus: the wise man is not one who tries to argue a person out of his convictions, _e.g._, that justice is only tyranny, or that sweet is bitter, but who so trains and educates the mind or appetite that the sounder and better view will spontaneously present itself. Thus a good sophist or a wise legislator will endeavour so to educate and so to govern, that right and reasonable views will approve themselves to the people. Again, in judging of what will be good or useful in the end, sagacity is needed, which clearly is not the property of everyone alike. A thing is right or wrong only as individual conviction or the law of a State makes it so for the time being; but in advising a certain course of action, where result, and therefore, forethought are involved, one counsellor may be greatly superior to another (p. 172). Hence, as legislation is prospective, it is not true that one man's opinion as to the wisdom or expediency of a measure is as good as another's; but there are some things at least in which one man's must be better than another's judgment. It was thus that Protagoras endeavoured to reconcile the obvious fact that some men were more clever than others, with the theory that all morality is based on mere human opinion. And those persons would take a very shallow view who think that all this is merely an ingenious quibbling. The difficulties which Protagoras attempted to solve are real ones, and only thinkers know to what extent all questions, both of religion and casuistry, are bound up with them. We proceed to perform, somewhat in brief, the less agreeable task of showing that Mr. Jowett's version of the _Theætetus_, though always fluent and pleasant to read, is not always as accurate as might have been desired.