view can there be some good and others bad, if virtue and vice are always
equally to be attributed to all.

HERMOGENES: There cannot.

SOCRATES: But if neither is right, and things are not relative to
individuals, and all things do not equally belong to all at the same moment
and always, they must be supposed to have their own proper and permanent
essence: they are not in relation to us, or influenced by us, fluctuating
according to our fancy, but they are independent, and maintain to their own
essence the relation prescribed by nature.

HERMOGENES: I think, Socrates, that you have said the truth.

SOCRATES: Does what I am saying apply only to the things themselves, or
equally to the actions which proceed from them? Are not actions also a
class of being?

HERMOGENES: Yes, the actions are real as well as the things.

SOCRATES: Then the actions also are done according to their proper nature,
and not according to our opinion of them? In cutting, for example, we do
not cut as we please, and with any chance instrument; but we cut with the
proper instrument only, and according to the natural process of cutting;
and the natural process is right and will succeed, but any other will fail
and be of no use at all.

HERMOGENES: I should say that the natural way is the right way.

SOCRATES: Again, in burning, not every way is the right way; but the right