Against all pretended, mechanically communicable rules of art then, against any rule of literary composition, for instance, unsanctioned by the facts, by a clear apprehension of the facts, of that experience, which to each one of us severally is the beginning, if it be not also the end, of all knowledge, against every merely formal dictate (their name is legion with practising Sophists of all ages) Peri brachylogias, kai eleeinologias, kai deinôseôs,+ concerning freedom or precision, figure, emphasis, proportion of parts and the like, exordium and conclusion:--against all such the Platonic Socrates still protests, "You know what must be known before harmony can be attained, but not yet the laws of harmony itself,"--ta pro tragôdias,+ Sophocles would object in like case, ta pro tragôdias, all' ou tragika.+ Given the dynamic Sophoclean intention or conviction, and the irresistible law of right utterance, (anankê logographikê)+ how one must write or speak, will make itself felt; will assuredly also renew many an old precept, as to how one shall write or speak, learned at school. To speak pros doxan+ only, as towards mere unreasoned opinion, might do well enough in the law-courts with people, who (as is understood in that case) do not really care very much about justice itself, desire only that a friend should be acquitted, or an enemy convicted, irrespectively of it; but [120] For the essence of all artistic beauty is expression, which cannot be where there's really nothing to be expressed; the line, the colour, the word, following obediently, and with minute scruple, the conscious motions of a convinced intelligible soul. To make men interested in themselves, as being the very ground of all reality for them, la vraie vérité, as the French say:--that was the essential function of the Socratic method: to flash light into the house within, its many chambers, its memories and associations, upon its inscribed and pictured walls. Fully occupied there, as with his own essential business in his own home, the young man would become, of course, proportionately less interested, less meanly interested, in what was superficial, in the mere outsides, of other people and their occupations. With the true artist indeed, with almost every expert, all knowledge, of almost every kind, tells, is attracted into, and duly charged with, the force of what [121] may be his leading apprehension. And as the special function of all speech as a fine art is the control of minds (psychagôgia)+ it is in general with knowledge of the soul of man--with a veritable psychology, with as much as possible as we can get of that--that the writer, the speaker, must be chiefly concerned, if he is to handle minds not by mere empiric routine, tribê monon, kai empeiria alla technê,+ but by the power of veritable fine art. Now such art, such theory, is not "to be caught with the left hand," as the Greek phrase went; and again, chalepa ta kala.+ We have no time to hear