Then Alcibiades, angrily: "What ugly mask is this you have put on,
Socrates? You speak rather like a priest trying to frighten rustics
into paying their first-fruits, than a philosopher inquiring after
that which is beautiful. But you shall never terrify me into
believing that it is not a noble thing to speak out whatsoever a man
believes, and to go forward boldly in the spirit of truth."

S. "Feeling first, I hope, with your staff, as would be but
reasonable in the case of the bridge, whether your belief was
objectively or only subjectively true, lest you should fall through
your subjective bridge into objective water. Nevertheless, leaving
the bridge and the water, let us examine a little what this said
spirit of truth may be. How do you define it?"

A. "I assert that whosoever says honestly what he believes, does so
by the spirit of truth."

S. "Then if Lyce, patting those soft cheeks of yours, were to say:
'Alcibiades, thou art the fairest youth in Athens,' she would speak
by the spirit of truth?"

A. "They say so."

S. "And they say rightly. But if Lyce, as is her custom, wished,
by so saying, to cheat you into believing that she loved you, and
thereby to wheedle you out of a new shawl, she would still speak by
the spirit of truth?"

A. "I suppose so."