Assent or dissent, whichever it may be, springs only from the free working of the individual mind, in its actual condition then and there. It is to the individual mind alone, that appeal is made, and this is what Protagoras asks for. We thus find, in Plato's philosophical character, two extreme opposite tendencies and opposite poles co-existent. We must recognise them both: but they can never be reconciled: sometimes he obeys and follows the one, sometimes the other. If it had been Plato's purpose to proclaim and impose upon every one something which he called "Absolute Truth," one and the same alike imperative upon all--he would best proclaim it by preaching or writing. To modify this "Absolute," according to the varieties of the persons addressed, would divest it of its intrinsic attribute and excellence. If you pretend to deal with an Absolute, you must turn away your eyes from all diversity of apprehending intellects and believing subjects. CHAPTER XXVII. PARMENIDES. [Side-note: Character of dialogues immediately preceding--much transcendental assertion. Opposite character of the Parmenides.] In the dialogues immediately preceding--Phædon, Phædrus, Symposion--we have seen Sokrates manifesting his usual dialectic, which never fails him: but we have also seen him indulging in a very unusual vein of positive affirmation and declaration. He has unfolded many novelties about the states of pre-existence and post-existence: he has familiarised us with Ideas, Forms, Essences, eternal and unchangeable, as the causes of all the facts and particularities of nature: he has recognised the inspired variety of madness, as being more worthy of trust than sober, uninspired, intelligence: he has recounted, with the faith of a communicant fresh from the mysteries, revelations made to him by the prophetess Diotima,--respecting the successive stages of exaltation whereby gifted intelligences, under the stimulus of Eros Philosophus, ascend into communion with the great sea of Beauty. All this is set forth with as much charm as Plato's eloquence can bestow. But after all, it is not the true character of Sokrates:--I mean, the Sokrates of the Apology, whose mission it is to make war against the chronic malady of the human mind--false persuasion of knowledge, without the reality. It is, on the contrary, Sokrates himself infected with the same chronic malady which he combats in others, and requiring medicine against it as much as others. Such is the exact character in which Sokrates appears in the Parmenides: which dialogue I shall now proceed to review. [Side-note: Sokrates is the juvenile defendant--Parmenides the veteran censor and cross-examiner. Parmenides gives a specimen of exercises to be performed by the philosophical aspirant.]