The Charmidês is one of the many Platonic dialogues wherein such intellectual experimentation appears depicted without any positive result: except as it adds fresh matter to illustrate that wide-spread mental fact,--(which has already come before the reader, in Euthyphron, Alkibiadês, Hippias, Erastæ, Lachês, &c., as to holiness, beauty, philosophy, courage, &c., and is now brought to view in the case of _temperance_ also; all of them words in every one's mouth, and tacitly assumed by every one as known quantities) the perpetual and confident judgments which mankind are in the habit of delivering--their apportionment of praise and blame, as well as of reward and punishment consequent on praise and blame--without any better basis than that of strong emotion imbibed they know not how, and without being able to render any rational explanation even of the familiar words round which such emotions are grouped. No philosopher has done so much as Plato to depict in detail this important fact--the habitual condition of human society, modern as well as ancient, and for that very reason generally unnoticed.[37] The emotional or subjective value of temperance is all that Sokrates determines, and which indeed he makes his point of departure. Temperance is essentially among the fine, beautiful, honourable, things:[38] but its rational or objective value (_i.e._, what is the common object characterising all temperate acts or persons), he cannot determine. Here indeed Plato is not always consistent with himself: for we shall come to other dialogues wherein he professes himself incompetent to say whether a thing be beautiful or not, until it be determined what the thing is:[39] and we have already found Sokrates declaring (in the Hippias Major), that we cannot determine whether any particular object is beautiful or not, until we have first determined, What is Beauty in the Absolute, or the Self-Beautiful? a problem nowhere solved by Plato. [Footnote 37: "Whoever has reflected on the generation of ideas in his own mind, or has investigated the causes of misunderstandings among mankind, will be obliged to proclaim as a fact deeply seated in human nature--That most of the misunderstandings and contradictions among men, most of the controversies and errors both in science and in society, arise usually from our assuming (consciously or unconsciously) fundamental maxims and fundamental facts as if they were self-evident, and as if they must be assumed by every one else besides. Accordingly we never think of closely examining them, until at length experience has taught us that these _self-evident_ matters are exactly what stand most in need of proof, and what form the special root of divergent opinions."--(L. O. Bröcker--Untersuchungen über die Glaubwürdigkeit der alt-Römischen Geschichte, p. 490.)]