"That is not my object. I wish merely to examine your thought. You incline to cloak it in myths, but you should learn to send truth from you clean and naked, as a trainer sends an athlete into the palæstra. If I offend you, Protagoras, you must forgive me; but I cannot follow an argument which is not direct. Do your words contain my meaning?" "Yes, Socrates." "Then you deny all truth except what a man draws out of himself?" "Yes." "And a man should not say it is cold. He should say I am cold?" "Yes; all external things are only what we imagine them to be." "The same, of course, holds good with regard to truth, virtue, and justice; these things are equally external to the individual. I think that you have said this before, Protagoras, have you not?" "Yes," said Protagoras. "Well, then, let us leave that part of the argument for the present," said Socrates. "We shall return to it later, as every one agrees to it. I wish to ask you another series of questions. If you wished to learn the art of making plays, would you go to a cobbler or to Euripides? To Euripides. Very well! But if you wished to learn the art of making shoes, would you go to a cobbler, or to a playwright?" "To a cobbler, of course!" "You would choose one skilful rather than a beginner; and in politics, also, you would choose an experienced man, in preference to one who had no experience, and in art you would take the finest artist as your master. Would you not?" "Of course." "And the same with pastry-cooks, with tillers of the soil and vine-dressers; you would choose the person most experienced?" "Yes." "All this I have learnt from what you said at the beginning of your discourse. If you wished to learn the arts of politics or of cobbling you would go to a politician or to a cobbler; but if you wished to learn the art of being virtuous, would you go to a vicious or to a virtuous man?" "To a virtuous man." "But why, Protagoras? Is not the test of truth in yourself and not in others?" "Yes." "Then you know the truth, and you recognise it when you meet with it?" "Yes." "But then the truth lies also outside of ourselves. Goodness, wisdom, and other excellent things are external to us, and we can only draw them out of ourselves? Have you not said that God is a projection of self?" "A stronger self, Socrates." "Then you recognise a standard of excellence beyond man, and this standard of excellence he draws out of himself; and that only is true which a man draws out of himself; but at the same time you recognise in others the art of cobbling and of politics." "These things are only conventional," said Protagoras. "Why, Protagoras? What is the difference between going as an apprentice to a good cobbler and going as an apprentice to a good man?" "Because cobbling is an art that any one may learn, but virtue is different." "Is virtue different from doing good?" "No." "A virtuous person will seek the good; he recognises goodness by his own standard?" "Yes."