These last cited colloquies also, between Sokrates and Aristippus, are among the most memorable remains of Grecian philosophy: belonging to one of the years preceding 399 B.C., in which last year Sokrates perished. Here (as in the former dialogue) the doctrine is distinctly enunciated by Sokrates--That Good and Evil--Beautiful (or Honourable) and Ugly (or Dishonourable--Base)--have no intelligible meaning except in relation to human happiness and security. Good or Evil Absolute (_i.e._, apart from such relation) is denied to exist. The theory of Absolute Good (a theory traceable to the Parmenidean doctrines, and adopted from them by Eukleides) becomes first known to us as elaborated by Plato. Even in his dialogues it is neither always nor exclusively advocated, but is often modified by, and sometimes even exchanged for, the eudæmonistic or relative theory. [Side-note: Good is relative to human beings and wants, in the view of Sokrates.] Sokrates declares very explicitly, in his conversation with Aristippus, what _he_ means by the Good and the Beautiful: and when therefore in the name of the Good and the Beautiful, he protests against an uncontrolled devotion to the pleasures of sense (as in one of the Xenophontic dialogues with Euthydemus[175]), what he means is, that a man by such intemperance ruins his prospects of future happiness, and his best means of being useful both to himself and others. Whether Aristippus first learnt from Sokrates the relative theory of the Good and the Beautiful, or had already embraced it before, we cannot say. Some of his questions, as reported in Xenophon, would lead us to suspect that it took him by surprise: just as we find, in the Protagoras of Plato that a theory substantially the same, though in different words, is proposed by the Platonic Sokrates to the Sophist Protagoras: who at first repudiates it, but is compelled ultimately to admit it by the elaborate dialectic of Sokrates.[176] If Aristippus did not learn the theory from Sokrates, he was at any rate fortified in it by the authority of Sokrates; to whose doctrine, in this respect, he adhered more closely than Plato. [Footnote 175: Xenoph. Memor. iv. 5.