Though Sokrates, and Plato so far forth as follower of Sokrates, employed a colloquial method based on the fundamental assumption of the Protagorean formula--autonomy of each individual mind--whether they accepted the formula in terms, or not; yet we shall find Plato at the end of his career, in his treatise De Legibus, constructing an imaginary city upon the attempted deliberate exclusion of this formula. We shall find him there monopolising all teaching and culture of his citizens from infancy upwards, barring out all freedom of speech or writing by a strict censorship, and severely punishing dissent from the prescribed orthodoxy. But then we shall also find that Plato in that last stage of his life--when he constitutes himself as lawgiver, the measure of truth or falsehood for all his citizens--has at the same time discontinued his early commerce with the Sokratic Dialectics. [Side-note: Plato in denying the Protagorean formula, constitutes himself the measure for all. Counter-proposition to the formula.] On the whole then, looking at what Plato says about the Protagorean doctrine of Relativity--_Homo Mensura_--first, his statement what the doctrine really is, next his strictures upon it--we may see that he ascribes to it consequences which it will not fairly carry. He impugns it as if it excluded philosophy and argumentative scrutiny: whereas, on the contrary, it is the only basis upon which philosophy or "reasoned truth" can stand. Whoever denies the Protagorean autonomy of the individual judgment, must propound as his counter theory some heteronomy, such as he (the denier) approves. If I am not allowed to judge of truth and falsehood for myself, who is to judge for me? Plato, in the Treatise De Legibus, answers very unequivocally:--assuming to himself that infallibility which I have already characterised as the prerogative of King Nomos: "I, the lawgiver, am the judge for all my citizens: you must take my word for what is true or false: you shall hear nothing except what my censors approve--and if, nevertheless, any dissenters arise, there are stringent penalties in store for them". Here is an explicit enunciation of the Counter-Proposition,[75] necessary to be maintained by those who deny the Protagorean doctrine. If you pronounce a man unfit to be the measure of truth for himself, you constitute yourself the measure, in his place: either directly as lawgiver--or by nominating censors according to your own judgment. As soon as he is declared a lunatic, some other person must be appointed to manage his property for him. You can only exchange one individual judgment for another. You cannot get out of the region of individual judgments, more or fewer in number: the King, the Pope, the Priest, the Judges or Censors, the author of some book, or the promulgator of such and such doctrine. The infallible measure which you undertake to provide, must be found in some person or persons--if it can be found at all: in some person selected by