it?"

A. "Of course not."

S. "Such a fact would be, therefore, no fact, and nothing."

A. "Why so?"

S. "Because, if a thing exists, it can only exist as it is, not as
it is not; at least my opinion inclines that way."

"Certainly not," said I; "why do you haggle so, Alcibiades?"

S. "Fair and softly, Phaethon! How do you know that he is not
fighting for wife and child, and the altars of his gods? But if he
will agree with you and me, he will confess that a thing which is
objectively false does not exist at all, and is nothing."

A. "I suppose it is necessary to do so. But I know whither you are
struggling."

S. "To this, dear youth, that, therefore, if a thing subjectively
true be also objectively false, it does not exist, and is nothing."

"It is so," said I.

S. "Let us, then, let nothing go its own way, while we go on ours
with that which is only objectively true, lest coming to a river
over which it is subjectively true to us that there is a bridge, and
trying to walk over that work of our own mind, but no one's hands,