persuading, he adapts his mode of speech to the predispositions of the hearer's own mind; and he thus recognises that mind as a measure for itself. But the Sokratic Dialectic embodies the same recognition, and the same essential relativity to the hearer's mind, more forcibly than any rhetoric. And the Platonic Sokrates (in the Phædrus) makes it one of his objections against orators who addressed multitudes, that they did not discriminate either the specialties of different minds, or the specialties of discourse applicable to each.[74] [Footnote 72: Plato, Theætêt. p. 161 E.] [Footnote 73: Read the animated passage in the conversation with Pôlus: Plato, Gorg. 472, and Theætêt. 161 A, pp. 375, 376. In this very argument of Sokrates (in the Theætêtus) against the Protagorean theory, we find him unconsciously adopting (as I have already remarked) the very language of that theory, as a description of his own procedure, p. 171 D. Compare with this a remarkable passage in the colloquy of Sokrates with Thrasymachus, in Republic, i. 337 C. Moreover, the long and striking contrast between the philosopher and the man of the world, which Plato embodies in this dialogue (the Theætêtus, from p. 172 to p. 177), is so far from assisting his argument against Protagoras, that it rather illustrates the Protagorean point of view. The beliefs and judgments of the man of the world are presented as flowing from _his_ mental condition and predispositions: those of the philosopher, from _his_. The two are radically dissentient: each appears to the other mistaken and misguided. Here is nothing to refute Protagoras. Each of the two is a measure for himself. Yes, it will be said; but Plato's measure is right, and that of the man of the world is wrong. Perhaps _I_ may think so. As a measure for myself, I speak and act accordingly. But the opponents have not agreed to accept _me_ any more than Plato as their judge. The case remains unsettled as before.] [Footnote 74: Plato, Phædrus, p. 271 D-E; compare 258 A.] [Side-note: Contrast with the Treatise De Legibus--Plato assumes infallible authority--sets aside Dialectic.]