instant. Seeing that he is not within call, we must examine the question
for ourselves. It is clear that there are great differences in the
understandings of men. Admitting, with Protagoras, that immediate
sensations of hot, cold, and the like, are to each one such as they appear,
yet this hypothesis cannot be extended to judgments or opinions. And even
if we were to admit further,--and this is the view of some who are not
thorough-going followers of Protagoras,--that right and wrong, holy and
unholy, are to each state or individual such as they appear, still
Protagoras will not venture to maintain that every man is equally the
measure of expediency, or that the thing which seems is expedient to every
one. But this begins a new question. 'Well, Socrates, we have plenty of
leisure. Yes, we have, and, after the manner of philosophers, we are
digressing; I have often observed how ridiculous this habit of theirs makes
them when they appear in court. 'What do you mean?' I mean to say that a
philosopher is a gentleman, but a lawyer is a servant. The one can have
his talk out, and wander at will from one subject to another, as the fancy
takes him; like ourselves, he may be long or short, as he pleases. But the
lawyer is always in a hurry; there is the clepsydra limiting his time, and
the brief limiting his topics, and his adversary is standing over him and
exacting his rights. He is a servant disputing about a fellow-servant
before his master, who holds the cause in his hands; the path never
diverges, and often the race is for his life. Such experiences render him
keen and shrewd; he learns the arts of flattery, and is perfect in the
practice of crooked ways; dangers have come upon him too soon, when the
tenderness of youth was unable to meet them with truth and honesty, and he
has resorted to counter-acts of dishonesty and falsehood, and become warped
and distorted; without any health or freedom or sincerity in him he has
grown up to manhood, and is or esteems himself to be a master of cunning.
Such are the lawyers; will you have the companion picture of philosophers?
or will this be too much of a digression?