A. "Certainly not. I was speaking of a spirit in man." S. "And belonging to him?" A. "Yes." S. "And doing-what, with regard to facts as they are? for this is just the thing which puzzles me." A. "Telling facts as they are." S. "Without seeing them as they are?" A. "How you bore one! of course not. It sees facts as they are, and therefore tells them." S. "But perhaps it might see them as they are, and find it expedient, being of the same temperament as I, to hold its tongue about them? Would it then be still the spirit of truth?" A. "It would, of course." S. "The man then who possesses the spirit of truth will see facts as they are?" A. "He will." S. "And conversely?" A. "Yes." S. "But if he sees anything only as it seems to him, and is not in fact, he will not, with regard to that thing, see it by the spirit of truth?" A. "I suppose not." S. "Neither then will he be able to speak of it by the spirit of truth." A. "Why?" S. "Because, by what we agreed before, it will not be there to speak of, my wondrous friend. For it appeared to us, if I recollect right, that facts can only exist as they are, and not as they are not, and that therefore the spirit of truth had nothing to do with any facts but those which are." "But," I interrupted, "O dear Socrates, I fear much that if the spirit of truth be such as this, it must be beyond the reach of man." S. "Why then?" P. "Because the immortal gods only can see things as they really are, having alone made all things, and ruling them all according to the laws of each. They therefore, I much fear, will be alone able to behold them, how they are really in their inner nature and properties, and not merely from the outside, and by guess, as we do. How then can we obtain such a spirit ourselves?" S. "Dear boy, you seem to wish that I should, as usual, put you off with a myth, when you begin to ask me about those who know far more about me than I do about them. Nevertheless, shall I tell you a myth?" P. "If you have nothing better." S. "They say, then, that Prometheus, when he grew to man's estate, found mankind, though they were like him in form, utterly brutish and ignorant, so that, as AEschylus says: Seeing they saw in vain, Hearing they heard not; but were like the shapes Of dreams, and long time did confuse all things At random: