72 Plato, Theætêt. p. 161 E.

73 Read the animated passage in the conversation with Pôlus: Plato, Gorg. 472, and Theætêt. 161 A, pp. 375, 376.

In this very argument of Sokrates (in the Theætêtus) against the Protagorean theory, we find him unconsciously adopting (as I have already remarked) the very language of that theory, as a description of his own procedure, p. 171 D. Compare with this a remarkable passage in the colloquy of Sokrates with Thrasymachus, in Republic, i. 337 C.

Moreover, the long and striking contrast between the philosopher and the man of the world, which Plato embodies in this dialogue (the Theætêtus, from p. 172 to p. 177), is so far from assisting his argument against Protagoras, that it rather illustrates the Protagorean point of view. The beliefs and judgments of the man of the world are presented as flowing from his mental condition and predispositions: those of the philosopher, from his. The two are radically dissentient: each appears to the other mistaken and misguided. Here is nothing to refute Protagoras. Each of the two is a measure for himself.

Yes, it will be said; but Plato’s measure is right, and that of the man of the world is wrong. Perhaps I may think so. As a measure for myself, I speak and act accordingly. But the opponents have not agreed to accept me any more than Plato as their judge. The case remains unsettled as before.

74 Plato, Phædrus, p. 271 D-E; compare 258 A.

75 Professor Ferrier’s Institutes of Metaphysic exhibit an excellent example of the advantages of setting forth explicitly the Counter-Proposition — that which an author intends to deny, as well as the Proposition which he intends to affirm and prove.

76 Aristotle says (Ethic. Nikomach. x. 1176, a. 15) δοκεῖ δ’ ἐν ἅπασι τοῖς τοιούτοις εἶναι τὸ φαινόμενον τῷ σπουδαίῳ. “That is, which appears to be in the judgment of the wise or virtuous man.” The ultimate appeal is thus acknowledged to be, not to an abstraction, but to some one or more individual persons whom Aristotle recognises as wise. That is truth which this wise man declares to be truth. You cannot escape from the Relative by any twist of reasoning.

What Platonic critics call “Der Gegensatz des Seins und des Scheins“ (see Steinhart, Einleit. zum Theætêt. p. 37) is unattainable. All that is attainable is the antithesis between that which appears to one person, and that which appears to one or more others, choose them as you will: between that which appears at a first glance, or at a distance, or on careless inspection — and that which appears after close and multiplied observations and comparisons, after full discussion, &c. Das Sein is that which appears to the person or persons whom we judge to be wise, under these latter favourable circumstances.

Epiktetus, i. 28, 1. Τί ἔστιν αἴτιον τοῦ συγκατατίθεσθαί τινι; Τὸ φαίνεσθαι ὅτι ὑπάρχει. Τῷ οὖν φαινομένῳ ὅτι οὐχ ὑπάρχει, συγκατατίθεσθαι οὐχ οἷόν τε.

77 Respecting the grounds and conditions of belief among the Hindoos, Sir William Sleeman (Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, ch. xxvi. vol. i. pp. 226-228) observes as follows:—

“Every word of this poem (the Ramaen, Ramayana) the people assured me was written, if not by the hand of the Deity himself, at least by his inspiration, which was the same thing, and it must consequently be true. Ninety-nine out of a hundred, among the Hindoos, implicitly believe, not only every word of this poem, but every word of every poem that has ever been written in Sanscrit. If you ask a man whether he really believes any very egregious absurdity quoted from these books, he replies with the greatest naïveté in the world, ‘Is it not written in the book; and how should it be there written if not true?’ … The greater the improbability, the more monstrous and preposterous the fiction, the greater is the charm that it has over their minds; and the greater their learning in the Sanscrit, the more are they under the influence of this charm. Believing all to be written by the Deity, or by his inspirations, and the men and things of former days to have been very different from the men and things of the present day, and the heroes of these fables to have been demigods, or people endowed with powers far superior to those of the ordinary men of their own day, the analogies of nature are never for a moment considered; nor do questions of probability, or possibility, according to those analogies, ever obtrude to dispel the charm with which they are so pleasingly bound. They go on through life reading and talking of these monstrous fictions, which shock the taste and understanding of other nations, without once questioning the truth of one single incident, or hearing it questioned. There was a time, and that not very distant, when it was the same in England and in every other European nation; and there are, I am afraid, some parts of Europe where it is so still. But the Hindoo faith, so far as religious questions are concerned, is not more capacious or absurd than that of the Greeks and Romans in the days of Sokrates and Cicero; the only difference is, that among the Hindoos a greater number of the questions which interest mankind are brought under the head of religion.”

78 This is the objection taken by Schwegler, Prantl, and other German thinkers, against the Protagorean doctrine (Prantl, Gesch. der Logik, vol. i. p. 12 seq.; Schwegler, Gesch. der Philos. im Umriss. s. 11, b. p. 26, ed. 5th). I had transcribed from each of these works a passage of some length, but I cannot find room for them in this note.

These authors both say, that the Protagorean canon, properly understood, is right, but that Protagoras laid it down wrongly. They admit the principle of Subjectivity, as an essential aspect of the case, in regard to truth; but they say that Protagoras was wrong in appealing to individual, empirical, accidental, subjectivity of each man at every varying moment, whereas he ought to have appealed to an ideal or universal subjectivity. “What ought to be held true, right, good, &c.,” (says Schwegler) “must be decided doubtless by me, but by me so far forth as a rational, and thinking being. Now my thinking, my reason, is not something specially belonging to me, but something common to all rational beings, something universal; so far therefore as I proceed as a rational and thinking person, my subjectivity is an universal subjectivity. Every thinking person has the consciousness that what he regards as right, duty, good, evil, &c., presents itself not merely to him as such, but also to every rational person, and that, consequently, his judgment possesses the character of universality, universal validity: in one word, Objectivity.”

Here it is explicitly asserted, that wherever a number of individual men employ their reason, the specialities of each disappear, and they arrive at the same conclusions — Reason being a guide impersonal as well as infallible. And this same view is expressed by Prantl in other language, when he reforms the Protagorean doctrine by saying, “Das Denken ist der Mass der Dinge”.

To me this assertion appears so distinctly at variance with notorious facts, that I am surprised when I find it advanced by learned historians of philosophy, who recount the very facts which contradict it. Can it really be necessary to repeat that the reason of one man differs most materially from that of another — and the reason of the same person from itself, at different times — in respect of the arguments accepted, the authorities obeyed, the conclusions embraced? The impersonal Reason is a mere fiction; the universal Reason is an abstraction, belonging alike to all particular reasoners, consentient or dissentient, sound or unsound, &c. Schwegler admits the Protagorean canon only under a reserve which nullifies its meaning. To say that the Universal Reason is the measure of truth is to assign no measure at all. The Universal Reason can only make itself known through an interpreter. The interpreters are dissentient; and which of them is to hold the privilege of infallibility? Neither Schwegler nor Prantl are forward to specify who the interpreter is, who is entitled to put dissentients to silence; both of them keep in the safe obscurity of an abstraction — “Das Denken” — the Universal Reason. Protagoras recognises in each dissentient an equal right to exercise his own reason, and to judge for himself.

In order to show how thoroughly incorrect the language of Schwegler and Prantl is, when they talk about the Universal Reason as unanimous and unerring, I transcribe from another eminent historian of philosophy a description of what philosophy has been from ancient times down to the present.

Degérando, Histoire Comparée des Systèmes de Philosophie, vol. i. p. 48:— “Une multitude d’hypothèses, élevées en quelque sorte au hasard, et rapidement détruites; une diversité d’opinions, d’autant plus sensible que la philosophie a été plus developpée; des sectes, des partis même, des disputes interminables, des spéculations stériles, des erreurs maintenues et transmises par une imitation aveugle; quelques découvertes obtenues avec lenteur, et mélangées d’idees fausses; des réformes annoncées à chaque siècle et jamais accomplies; une succession de doctrines qui se renversent les unes les autres sans pouvoir obtenir plus de solidité: la raison humaine ainsi promenée dans un triste cercle de vicissitudes, et ne s’élevant à quelques époques fortunées que pour retomber bientôt dans de nouveaux écarts, &c.… les mêmes questions, enfin, qui partagèrent il y a plus de vingt siècles les premiers génies de la Grèce, agitées encore aujourd’hui après tant de volumineux écrits consacrés à les discuter”.

79 Plutarch, adv. Kolot. p. 1108.

According to Demokritus all sensible perceptions were conventional, or varied according to circumstances, or according to the diversity of the percipient Subject; but there was an objective reality — minute, solid, invisible atoms, differing in figure, position, and movement, and vacuum along with them. Such reality was intelligible only by Reason. Νόμῳ γλυκύ, νόμῳ πικρόν, νόμῳ θερμόν, νόμῳ ψυχρόν, νόμῳ χροιή· ἐτέῃ δὲ ἄτομα καὶ κενόν. Ἅπερ νομίζεται μὲν εἶναι καὶ δοξάζεται τὰ αἰσθητά, οὐκ ἔστι δὲ κατὰ ἀληθείαν ταῦτα· ἀλλὰ τὰ ἄτομα μόνον καὶ κένον.

Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathemat. vii. 135-139; Diog. Laert. ix. 72. See Mullach, Democriti Fragm. pp. 204-208.

The discourse of Protagoras Περὶ τοῦ ὄντος, was read by Porphyry, who apparently cited from it a passage verbatim, which citation Eusebius unfortunately has not preserved (Eusebius, Præpar. Evang. x. 3, 17). One of the speakers in Porphyry’s dialogue (describing a repast at the house of Longinus at Athens to celebrate Plato’s birthday) accused Plato of having copied largely from the arguments of Protagoras — πρὸς τοὺς ἓν τὸ ὂν εἰσάγοντας. Allusion is probably made to the Platonic dialogues Parmenides and Sophistes.

80 Plato, Gorgias, p. 472.

81 Plato, Theætêt. pp. 152 A, 159 C.

82 Aristotle (Metaphysic. Γ. p. 1010, a. 25 seq.) in arguing against Herakleitus and his followers, who dwelt upon τὰ αἰσθητὰ as ever fluctuating and undefinable, urges against them that this is not true of all αἰσθητά, but only of those in the sublunary region of the Kosmos. But this region is (he says) only an imperceptibly small part of the entire Kosmos; the objects in the vast superlunary or celestial region of the Kosmos were far more numerous, and were also eternal and unchangeable, in constant and uniform circular rotation. Accordingly, if you predicate one or other about αἰσθητὰ generally, you ought to predicate constancy and unchangeability, not flux and variation, since the former predicates are true of much the larger proportion of αἰσθητά. See the Scholia on the above passage of Aristotle’s Metaphysica, and also upon Book A. 991, a. 9.

83 Mr. Campbell, in his Preface to the Theætêtus (p. lxxxiii.), while comparing the points in the dialogue with modern metaphysical views, observes. “Modern Experimental Science is equally distrustful of individual impressions of sense, but has found means of measuring the motions by which they are caused, through the effect of the same motions upon other things besides our senses. When the same wind is blowing one of us feels warm and another cold (Theætêt. p. 152), but the mercury of the thermometer tells the same tale to all. And though the individual consciousness remains the sole judge of the exact impression momentarily received by each person, yet we are certain that the sensation of heat and cold, like the expansion and contraction of the mercury, is in every case dependent on a universal law.”

It might seem from Mr. Campbell’s language (I do not imagine that he means it so) as if Modern Experimental Science had arrived at something more trustworthy than “individual impressions of sense”. But the expansion or contraction of the mercury are just as much facts of sense as the feeling of heat or cold; only they are facts of sense determinate and uniform to all, whereas the feeling of heat or cold is indeterminate and liable to differ with different persons. The certainty about “universal law governing the sensations of heat and cold,” was not at all felt in the days of Plato.

84 Thus in the Philêbus (pp. 55-56) Plato declares that numbering, measuring, and weighing, are the characteristic marks of all the various processes which deserve the name of Arts; and that among the different Arts those of the carpenter, builder, &c., are superior to those of the physician, pilot, husbandman, military commander, musical composer, &c., because the two first-named employ more measurement and a greater number of measuring instruments, the rule, line, plummet, compass, &c.

“When we talk about iron or silver” (says Sokrates in the Platonic Phædrus, p. 263 A-B) “we are all of one mind, but when we talk about the Just and the Good we are all at variance with each other, and each man is at variance with himself”. Compare an analogous passage, Alkibiad. I. p. 109.

Here Plato himself recognises the verifications of sense as the main guarantee for accuracy: and the compared facts of sense, when select and simplified, as ensuring the nearest approach to unanimity among believers.

85 Plato, Theætêt. p. 163 A. εἰς γὰρ τοῦτό που πᾶς ὁ λόγος ἡμῖν ἔτεινε, καὶ τούτου χάριν τὰ πολλὰ καὶ ἄτοπα ταῦτα ἐκινήσαμεν.

86 Plato, Theætêt. p. 163 C.

87 I borrow here a striking passage from Dugald Stewart, which illustrates both the passage in Plato’s text, and the general question as to the relativity of Cognition. Here, the fact of relative Cognition is brought out most conspicuously on its intellectual side, not on its perceptive side. The fact of sense is the same to all, and therefore, though really relative, has more the look of an absolute; but the mental associations with that fact are different with different persons, and therefore are more obviously and palpably relative. — Dugald Stewart, First Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopæd. Britannica, pp. 66, 8th ed.

“To this reference of the sensation of colour to the external object, I can think of nothing so analogous as the feelings we experience in surveying a library of books. We speak of the volumes piled up on its shelves as treasures or magazines of the knowledge of past ages; and contemplate them with gratitude and reverence as inexhaustible sources of instruction and delight to the mind. Even in looking at a page of print or manuscript, we are apt to say that the ideas we acquire are received by the sense of sight; and we are scarcely conscious of a metaphor when we apply this language. On such occasions we seldom recollect that nothing is perceived by the eye but a multitude of black strokes drawn upon white paper, and that it is our own acquired habits which communicate to these strokes the whole of that significancy whereby they are distinguished from the unmeaning scrawling of an infant. The knowledge which we conceive to be preserved in books, like the fragrance of a rose, or the gilding of the clouds, depends, for its existence, on the relation between the object and the percipient mind: and the only difference between the two cases is, that, in the one, this relation is the local and temporary effect of conventional habits: in the other, it is the universal and the unchangeable work of nature.… What has now been remarked with respect to written characters, may be extended very nearly to oral language. When we listen to the discourse of a public speaker, eloquence and persuasion seem to issue from his lips; and we are little aware that we ourselves infuse the soul into every word that he utters. The case is exactly the same when we enjoy the conversation of a friend. We ascribe the charm entirely to his voice and accents; but without our co-operation, its potency would vanish. How very small the comparative proportion is, which in such cases the words spoken contribute to the intellectual and moral effect, I have elsewhere endeavoured to show.”

88 Plato, Theætêt. pp. 163, 164.

89 Plato, Theætêt. p. 165 B.

90 Plato, Theætêt. p. 165 B. τὸ δεινότατον ἐρώτημα — ἀφύκτῳ ἐρωτήματι, &c.

Mr. Campbell observes upon this passage:— “Perhaps there is here a trace of the spirit which was afterwards developed in the sophisms of Eubulidês”. Stallbaum, while acknowledging the many subtleties of Sokrates in this dialogue, complains that other commentators make the ridiculous mistake (“errore perquam ridiculo”) of accepting all the reasoning of Sokrates as seriously meant, whereas much of it (he says) is mere mockery and sarcasm, intended to retort upon the Sophists their own argumentative tricks and quibbles. — “Itaquè sæpe per petulantiam quandam argutiis indulget (Socrates), quibus isti haudquaquam abstinebant: sæpè ex adversariorum mente disputat, sed ita tamen disputat, ut eos suis ipsorum capiat laqueis; sæpè denique in disputando iisdem artificiis utitur, quibus illi uti consueverant, sicuti etiam in Menone, Cratylo, Euthydemo, fieri meminimus”. (Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Theæt. pp. 12-13, 22-29).

Stallbaum pushes this general principle so far as to contend that the simile of the waxen tablet (p. 191 C), and that of the pigeon-house (p. 200 C), are doctrines of opponents, which Sokrates pretends to adopt with a view to hold them up to ridicule.

I do not concur in this opinion of Stallbaum, which he reproduces in commenting on many other dialogues, and especially on the Kratylus, for the purpose of exonerating Plato from the reproach of bad reasoning and bad etymology, at the cost of opponents “inauditi et indefensi”. I see no ground for believing that Plato meant to bring forward these arguments as paralogisms obviously and ridiculously silly. He produced them, in my judgment, as suitable items in a dialogue of search: plausible to a certain extent, admitting both of being supported and opposed, and necessary to be presented to those who wish to know a question in all its bearings.