Then Socrates, laughing:

“My fine fellow, you will have made more than one oration in the Pnyx to-day.  And indeed, I myself felt quite exalted, and rapt aloft, like Bellerophon on Pegasus, upon the eloquence of Protagoras and you.  But yet forgive me this one thing; for my mother bare me, as you know, a man-midwife, after her own trade, and not a sage.”

ALCIBIADES.  “What then?”

SOCRATES.  “This, my astonishing friend—for really I am altogether astonished and struck dumb, as I always am whensoever I hear a brilliant talker like you discourse concerning objectivities and subjectivities, and such mysterious words; at such moments I am like an old war-horse, who, though he will rush on levelled lances, shudders and sweats with terror at a boy rattling pebbles in a bladder; and I feel altogether dizzy, and dread lest I should suffer some such transformation as . . . Read More