The Platonic Dialogues of Search disclaim authority and teaching--assume truth to be unknown to all alike--follow a process devious as well as fruitless 367 The questioner has no predetermined course, but follows the lead given by the respondent in his answers _ib._ Relation of teacher and learner. Appeal to authority is suppressed 368 In the modern world the search for truth is put out of sight. Every writer or talker professes to have already found it, and to proclaim it to others 369 The search for truth by various interlocutors was a recognised process in the Sokratic age. Acute negative Dialectic of Sokrates 370 Negative procedure supposed to be represented by the Sophists and the Megarici; discouraged and censured by historians of philosophy 371 Vocation of Sokrates and Plato for the negative procedure: absolute necessity of it as a condition of reasoned truth. Parmenidês of Plato 372 Sokrates considered the negative procedure to be valuable by itself, and separately. His theory of the natural state of the human mind; not ignorance, but false persuasion of knowledge 373 Declaration of Sokrates in the Apology; his constant mission to make war against the false persuasion of knowledge 374 Opposition of feeling between Sokrates and the Dikasts 375 The Dialogues of Search present an end in themselves. Mistake of supposing that Plato had in his mind an ulterior affirmative end, not declared _ib._ False persuasion of knowledge--had reference to topics social, political, ethical 376 To those topics, on which each community possesses established dogmas, laws, customs, sentiments, consecrated and traditional, peculiar to itself. The local creed, which is never formally proclaimed or taught, but is enforced unconsciously by every one upon every one else. Omnipotence of King Nomos 377 Small minority of exceptional individual minds, who do not yield to the established orthodoxy, but insist on exercising their own judgment 382 Early appearance of a few free-judging individuals, or free-thinkers in Greece 384 Rise of Dialectic--Effect of the Drama and the Dikastery 386 Application of Negative scrutiny to ethical and social topics by Sokrates _ib._ Emphatic assertion by Sokrates of the right of satisfaction for his own individual reason 386 Aversion of the Athenian public to the negative procedure of Sokrates. Mistake of supposing that that negative procedure belongs peculiarly to the Sophists and the Megarici 387 The same charges which the historians of philosophy bring against the Sophists were brought by contemporary Athenians against Sokrates. They represent the standing dislike of free inquiry, usual with an orthodox public 388 Aversion towards Sokrates aggravated by his extreme publicity of speech. His declaration, that false persuasion of knowledge is universal; must be understood as a basis in appreciating Plato's Dialogues of Search 393