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[59a] make use of opinion and persistently investigate things which have to do with opinion? And even if they think they are studying nature, they are spending their lives in the study of the things of this world, the manner of their production, their action, and the forces to which they are subjected. Is not that true?

Protarchus
Yes, it is.

Socrates
Such thinkers, then, toil to discover, not eternal verities, but transient productions of the present, the future, or the past?

Protarchus
Perfectly true.

Socrates
And can we say that any of these things becomes certain, if tested by the touchstone of strictest truth,


Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925.

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