_d._ A few minor points still remain to be summed up: (1) The extravagant irony in the reason which is assigned for the pilot’s modest charge (p. 512); and in the proposed use of rhetoric as an instrument of self-condemnation (p. 480); and in the mighty power of geometrical equality in both worlds (p. 508). (2) The reference of the mythus to the previous discussion should not be overlooked: the fate reserved for incurable criminals such as Archelaus (p. 525); the retaliation of the box on the ears (p. 527); the nakedness of the souls and of the judges who are stript of the clothes or disguises which rhetoric and public opinion have hitherto provided for them (p. 523; cp. Swift’s notion that the universe is a suit of clothes, Tale of a Tub, section 2). The fiction seems to have involved Plato in the necessity of supposing that the soul retained a sort of corporeal likeness after death (p. 524). (3) The appeal to the authority of Homer, who says that Odysseus saw Minos in his court ‘holding a golden sceptre,’ which gives verisimilitude to the tale (p. 526). It is scarcely necessary to repeat that Plato is playing ‘both sides of the game,’ and that in criticising the characters of Gorgias and Polus, we are not passing any judgment on historical individuals, but only attempting to analyze the ‘dramatis personae’ as they were conceived by him. Neither is it necessary to enlarge upon the obvious fact that Plato is a dramatic writer, whose real opinions cannot always be assumed to be those which he puts into the mouth of Socrates, or any other speaker who appears to have the best of the argument; or to repeat the observation that he is a poet as well as a philosopher; or to remark that he is not to be tried by a modern standard, but interpreted with reference to his place in the history of thought and the opinion of his time. [Sidenote: _The irony of Socrates._] It has been said that the most characteristic feature of the Gorgias is the assertion of the right of dissent, or private judgment. But this mode of stating the question is really opposed both to the spirit of Plato and of ancient philosophy generally. For Plato is not asserting any abstract right or duty of toleration, or advantage to be derived from freedom of thought; indeed, in some other parts of his writings (e. g. Laws, x), he has fairly laid himself open to the charge of intolerance. No speculations had as yet arisen respecting the ‘liberty of prophesying;’ and Plato is not affirming any abstract right of this nature: but he is asserting the duty and right of the one wise and true man to dissent from the folly and falsehood of the many. At the same time he acknowledges the natural result, which he hardly seeks to avert, that he who speaks the truth to a multitude, regardless of consequences, will probably share the fate of Socrates. * * * * *