Plato, Cratylus, section 386d

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[386d] if whatever seems to each person is really true to him.

Hermogenes
Quite right.

Socrates
But neither do you believe with Euthydemus that all things belong equally to all men at the same time and perpetually,¹ for on this assumption also some could not be good and others bad, if virtue and its opposite were always equally possessed by all.

Hermogenes
True.

Socrates
Then if neither all things belong equally to all men at the same time and perpetually nor each thing to each man individually, it is clear that things have some fixed reality of their own,

1 The doctrine here attributed to Euthydemus is not expressly enunciated by him in the dialogue which bears his name, but it is little more than a comprehensive statement of the several doctrines there proclaimed by him and his brother Dionysodorus.

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.

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