priori_ beliefs or intuitions to be altogether relative to the
human mind. "Kant, considérant que les conceptions de la raison
sont des croyances aveugles auxquelles notre esprit se sent
fatalement déterminé par sa nature, en conclut qu'elles sont
rélatives à cette nature: que si notre nature était autre, elles
pourraient être différentes: que par conséquent, elles n'ont
aucune valeur absolue: et qu'ainsi notre vérité, notre science,
notre certitude, sont une vérité, une science, une certitude,
purement _subjective_, purement humaine--à laquelle nous sommes
déterminés à nous fier par notre nature, mais qui ne supporte pas
l'examen et n'a aucune valeur _objective_" (p. clxvii.) . . .
"C'est ce que répéte Kant quand il soutient que l'on ne peut
_objectiver le subjectif_: c'est à dire, faire que la vérité
humaine cesse d'être humaine, puisque la raison qui la trouve est
humaine. On peut exprimer de vingt manières différentes cette
impossibilité: elle reste toujours la même, et demeure toujours
insurmontable," p. cxc. Compare p. xcvii. of the same Preface.
M. Pascal Galuppi (in his Lettres Philosophiques sur les
Vicissitudes de la Philosophie, translated from the Italian by M.
Peisse, Paris, 1844) though not agreeing in this variety of _à
priori_ philosophy, agrees with Kant in declaring the _à priori_
element of cognition to be purely subjective, and the objective
element to be _à posteriori_ (Lett. xiv. pp. 337-338), or the
facts of sense and experience. "L'ordre _à priori_, que Kant
appelle _transcendental_, est purement idéal, et dépourvu de toute
réalité. Je vis, qu'en fondant la connaissance sur l'ordre _à
priori_, on arrive nécessairement au scepticisme: et je reconnus
que la doctrine Écossaise est la mère légitime du Criticisme
Kantien, et par conséquent, du scepticisme, qui est la conséquence
de la philosophie critique. Je considérai comme de haute
importance ce problème de Kant. Il convient de déterminer ce qu'il
y a d'objectif, et ce qu'il y a de subjectif, dans la
connaissance. Les Empiriques n'admettent dans la connaissance
d'autres élémens que les objectifs," &c.]
[Footnote 21: See this point handled in Sextus Empiric. adv.
Mathemat. viii. 355-362. We may here cite a remark of Simplikius
in his Commentary on the Categories of Aristotle (p. 64, a. in
Schol. Brandis). Aristotle (De Animâ, iii. 2, 426, a. 19; Categor.
p. 7, b. 23) lays down the doctrine that in most cases Relata or
([Greek: ta\ pro/s ti]) are "simul Naturâ, [Greek: kai\
sunanairei= a)/llêla]": but that in some Relata this is not true:
for example, [Greek: to\ e)pistêto\n] is relative to [Greek:
e)pistê/mê], yet still _it would seem prior_ to [Greek: e)pistê/mê
(pro/teron a)\n do/xeie tê=s e)pistê/mês ei)=nai)]. There cannot
be [Greek: e)pistê/mê] without some [Greek: e)pistêto/n]: but
there may be [Greek: e)pistêto\n] without any [Greek: e)pistê/mê].
There are few things, if any (he says), in which the [Greek:
e)pistêto\n] (cognoscibile) is _simul naturâ_ with [Greek:
e)pistê/mê] (or cognitio) and cannot be without it.
Upon which Simplikius remarks, What are these few things? [Greek:
Ti/na de\ ta\ o)li/ga e)sti/n, e)ph' ô(=n a(/ma tô=| e)pistêtô=|
ê( e)pistê/mê e)sti/n? Ta\ a)/neu u(/lês, ta\ noêta/, a(/ma tô=|
kat' e)nergei/an a)ei\ e)stô/sê| e)pistê/mê e)/stin, ei)/te kai\
e)n ê(mi=n e)sti/ tis toiau/tê a)ei\ a)/nô me/nousa, . . . ei)/te
kai\ e)n tô=| kat' e)nergei/an vô=| ei)/ tis kai\ tê\n no/êsin
e)kei/nên e)pistê/mên e(/loito kalei=n. du/natai de\ kai\ dia\
tê\n tô=n koinô=n u(po/stasin ei)rê=sthai, tê\n e)x a)phaire/seôs;
a(/ma ga\r tê=| u(posta/sei tou/tôn kai\ ê( e)pistê/mê e)sti/n.
a)lêthe\s de\ kai\ e)pi\ tô=n a)naplasma/tôn tô=n te e)n tê=|
phantasi/a| kai\ tô=n technitô=n; a(/ma ga\r chi/maira kai\ ê(
e)pistê/mê chimai/ras.]
We see from hence that Simplikius recognises Concepts,
Abstractions, and Fictions, to be dependent on the Conceiving,
Abstracting, Imagining, Mind--as distinguished from objects of
Sense, which he does not recognise as dependent in the like
manner. He agrees in the doctrine of Protagoras as to the former,
but not as to the latter. This illustrates what I have affirmed,
That the Protagorean doctrine of "_Homo Mensura_" is not only
unconnected with the other principle (that Knowledge is resolvable
into sensible perception) to which Aristotle and Plato would trace
it--but that there is rather a repugnance between the two. The
difficulty of proving the doctrine, and the reluctance to admit
it, is greatest in the case of material objects, least in the case
of Abstractions, and General Ideas. Yet Aristotle, in reasoning
against the Protagorean doctrine (Metaphysic. [Greek: G]. pp.
1009-1010, &c.) treats it like Plato, as a sort of corollary from
the theory that Cognition is Sensible Perception.
Simplikius farther observes (p. 65, b. 14) that Aristotle is not
accurate in making [Greek: e)pistêto\n] correlate with [Greek:
e)pistê/mê]: that in Relata, the potential correlates with the
potential, and the actual with the actual. The Cognoscible is
correlative, not with actual cognition ([Greek: e)pistê/mê]) but
with potential Cognition, or with a potential Cognoscens.
Aristotle therefore is right in saying that there may be [Greek:
e)pistêto\n] without [Greek: e)pistê/mê], but this does not prove
what he wishes to establish.
Themistius, in another passage of the Aristotelian Scholia,
reasoning against Boethus, observes to the same effect as
Simplikius, that in relatives, the actual correlates with the
actual, and the potential with the potential:--
[Greek: Kai/toi, phêsi/ ge o( Boêtho/s, ou)de\n kôlu/ei to\n
a)rithmo\n ei)=nai kai\ di/cha tou= a)rithmou=ntos, ô(/sper
oi)=mai to\ ai)sthêto\n kai\ di/cha tou= ai)sthanome/nou;
spha/lletai de/, a(/ma ga\r ta\ pro\s ti/, kai\ ta\ duna/mei pro\s
ta\ duna/mei; ô(/ste ei) mê\ kai\ a)rithmêtiko/n, ou)de\ to\
a)rithmêto/n] (Schol. ad Aristot. Physic. iv. p. 223, a. p. 393,
Schol. Brandis).
Compare Aristotel. Metaphysic. M. 1087, a. 15, about [Greek: to\
e)pi/stasthai duna/mei] and [Greek: to\ e)pi/stasthai
e)nergei/a|].
About the essential co-existence of relatives--Sublato uno,
tollitur alterum--see also Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathematicos, vii.
395, p. 449, Fabric.]
[Side-note: Evidence from Plato proving implication of Subject and
Object, in regard to the intelligible world.]
That this general doctrine is true, not merely respecting the
facts of sense, but also respecting the facts of mental
conception, opinion, intellection, cognition--may be seen by the
reasoning of Plato himself in other dialogues. How, for example,
does Plato prove, in his Timæus, the objective reality of Ideas or
Forms? He infers them from the subjective facts of his own mind.
The subjective fact called Cognition (he argues) is generically
different from the subjective fact called True Opinion: therefore
the Object correlating with the One must be distinct from the
Object correlating with the other: there must be a Noumenon or
[Greek: noêto/n ti] correlating with Nous, distinct from the
[Greek: doxasto/n ti] which correlates with [Greek: do/xa].[22] So
again, in the Phædon,[23] Sokrates proves the pre-existence of the
human soul from the fact that there were pre-existent cognizable
Ideas: if there were knowable Objects, there must also have been a
Subject Cognoscens or Cognitionis capax. The two are different
aspects of one and the same conception: upon which we may
doubtless reason abstractedly under one aspect or under the other,
though they cannot be separated in fact. Now Both these two
inferences of Plato rest on the assumed implication of Subject and
Object.[24]
[Footnote 22: Plato, Timæus, p. 51 B-E, compare Republic, v. p.
477.
See this reasoning of Plato set forth in Zeller, Die Phil. der
Griech. vol. ii. pp. 412-416, ed. 2nd.
_Nous_, according to Plato (Tim. 51 E), belongs only to the Gods
and to a select few among mankind. It is therefore only _to_ the
Gods and _to_ these few men that [Greek: Noêta\] exist. To the
rest of mankind [Greek: Noêta\] are non-apparent and
non-existent.]
[Footnote 23: Plato, Phædon, pp. 76-77. [Greek: i)/sê a)na/gkê
tau=ta/ te] (Ideas or Forms) [Greek: ei)=nai, kai\ ta\s ê(mete/ras
psucha\s pri\n kai\ ê(ma=s gegone/nai--kai\ ei) mê\ tau=ta, ou)de\
ta/de. U(perphuô=s, e)/phê o( Simmi/as, dokei= moi ê( au)tê\
a)na/gkê ei)=nai, kai\ ei)s kalo/n ge katapheu/gei o( lo/gos ei)s
to\ o(moi/ôs ei)=nai tê/n te psuchê\n ê(mô=n pri\n gene/sthai
ê(ma=s kai\ tê\n ou)si/an ê(\n su\ nu=n le/geis.]
Compare p. 92 E of the same dialogue with the notes of Wyttenbach
and Heindorf--"Haec autem [Greek: ou)si/a] Idearum, rerum
intelligibilium, [Greek: au)tê=s e)sti\n] (_sc._ [Greek: tê=s
psuchê=s]) ut hoc loco dicitur, est propria et possessio animæ
nostræ," &c.
About the essential implication of [Greek: Nou=s] with the [Greek:
Noêta/], as well as of [Greek: to\ do/xazon] with [Greek: ta\
doxazo/mena], and of [Greek: to\ ai)sthano/menon] with [Greek: ta\
ai)sthêta/], see Plutarch, De Animæ Procreat. in Timæo, pp.
1012-1024; and a curious passage from Joannes Philoponus ad Aristot.
Physica, cited by Karsten in his Commentatio De Empedoclis
Philosophiâ, p. 372, and Olympiodorus ad Platon. Phædon, p. 21.
[Greek: to\n nou=n phame\n a)kribô=s ginô/skein, dio/ti au)to/s
e)sti to\ noêto/n.]
Sydenham observes, in a note upon his translation of the Philêbus
(note 76, p. 118), "Being Intelligent and Being Intelligible are
not only correlatives, but are so in their very essence: neither
of them can be at all, without the Being of the other".]
[Footnote 24: I think that the inference in the Phædon is not
necessary to prove that conclusion, nor in itself just. For when I
speak of Augustus and Antony as having once lived, and as having
fought the battle of Actium, it is noway necessary that I should
believe myself to have been then alive and to have seen them: nor
when I speak of civil war as being now carried on in the United
States of America, is it necessary that I should believe myself to
be or to have been on the spot as a percipient witness. I believe,
on evidence which appears to me satisfactory, that both these are
real facts: that is, if I had been at Actium on the day of the
battle, or if I were now in the United States, I should see and
witness the facts here affirmed. These latter words describe the
subjective side of the fact, without introducing any supposition
that I have been myself present and percipient.]
[Side-note: The Protagorean measure is even more easily shown in
reference to the intelligible world than in reference to sense.]
In truth, the Protagorean measure or limit is even more plainly
applicable to our mental intuitions and mental processes
(remembering, imagining, conceiving, comparing, abstracting,
combining of hypotheses, transcendental or inductive) than to the
matter of our sensible experience.[25] In regard to the Entia
Rationis, divergence between one theorist and another is quite as
remarkable as the divergence between one percipient and another in
the most disputable region of Entia Perceptionis. Upon the
separate facts of sense, there is a nearer approach to unanimity
among mankind, than upon the theories whereby theorising men
connect together those facts to their own satisfaction. An
opponent of Protagoras would draw his most plausible arguments
from the undisputed facts of sense. He would appeal to matter and
what are called its primary qualities, as refuting the doctrine.
For in describing mental intuitions, Mind or Subject cannot well
be overlaid or ignored: but in regard to the external world, or
material substance with its primary qualities, the objective side
is so lighted up and magnified in the ordinary conception and
language--and the subjective side so darkened and put out of
sight--that Object appears as if it stood single, apart, and
independent.
[Footnote 25: Bacon remarks that the processes called mental or
intellectual are quite as much relative to man as those called
sensational or perceptive. "Idola Tribûs sunt fundata in ipsâ
naturâ humanâ. Falso enim asseritur, Sensum humanum esse mensuram
rerum: quin contra, omnes perceptiones, tam Sensûs quam Mentis,
sunt ex analogiâ hominis, non ex analogiâ Universi."
Nemesius, the Christian Platonist, has a remark bearing upon this
question. He says that the lower animals have their intellectual
movements all determined by Nature, which acts alike in all the
individuals of the species, but that the human intellect is not
wholly determined by Nature; it has a freer range, larger stores
of ideas, and more varied combinations: hence its manifestations
are not the same in all, but different in different
individuals--[Greek: e)leu/theron ga/r ti kai\ au)texou/sion to\
logiko/n, o(/then ou)ch e(\n kai\ tau)to\n pa=sin e)/rgon a)nthrô/pois,
ô(s e(ka/stô| ei)/dei tô=n a)lo/gôn zô/ôn; phu/sei ga\r mo/nê| ta\
toiau=ta kinei=tai, ta\ de\ phu/sei o(moi/ôs para\ pa=si/n e)stin;
ai( de\ logikai\ pra/xeis a)/llai par' a)/llois kai\ ou)k e)x
a)na/gkês ai( au(=tai para\ pa=sin] (De Nat. Hom., c. ii. p. 53.
ed. 1565).]
A man conceives objects, like houses and trees, as existing when
he does not actually see or touch them, just as much as when he
does see or touch them. He conceives them as existing independent
of any actual sensations of his own: and he proceeds to describe
them as independent altogether of himself as a Subject--or as
absolute, not relative, existences. But this distinction, though
just as applied in ordinary usage, becomes inadmissable when
brought to contradict the Protagorean doctrine; because the
speaker professes to exclude, what cannot be excluded, himself as
concipient Subject.[26] It is he who conceives absent objects as
real and existing, though he neither sees nor touches them: he
believes fully, that if he were in a certain position near them,
he would experience those appropriate sensations of sight and
touch, whereby they are identified. Though he eliminates himself
as a _percipient_, he cannot eliminate himself as a _concipient_:
_i.e._, as conceiving and believing. He can conceive no object
without being himself the Subject conceiving, nor believe in any
future contingency without being himself the Subject believing. He
may part company with himself as percipient, but he cannot part
company with himself altogether. His conception of an absent
external object, therefore, when fully and accurately described,
does not contradict the Protagorean doctrine. But it is far the
most plausible objection which can be brought against that
doctrine, and it is an objection deduced from the facts or
cognitions of sense.
[Footnote 26: Bishop Berkeley observes:--
"But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than to imagine
trees, for instance, in a park, or books existing in a closet, and
nobody by to perceive them. I answer, you may so--there is no
difficulty in it. But what is all this, more than framing in your
mind certain ideas which you call _books_ and _trees_, and at the
same time omitting to frame the idea of any one that may perceive
them? _But do not you yourself perceive or think of them all the
while?_ This therefore is nothing to the purpose. It only shows
you have the power of imagining or forming ideas in your mind: but
it doth not show that you can conceive it possible the objects of
your thought may exist without the mind. _To make out this, it is
necessary that you conceive them existing unconceived or unthought
of, which is a manifest repugnancy._ When we do our utmost to
conceive the existence of external bodies, we are all the while
only contemplating our own ideas. _But the mind, taking no notice
of itself, is deluded to think it can and doth conceive bodies
existing unthought of or without the mind, though at the same
time they are apprehended by or exist in itself._"
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, sect. xxiii. p. 34, ed.
of Berkeley's Works, 1820. The same argument is enforced in
Berkeley's First Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous, pp. 145-146
of the same volume.
I subjoin a passage from the work of Professor Bain on Psychology,
where this difficult subject is carefully analysed (The Senses and
the Intellect, p. 370). "There is no possible knowledge of the
world except in reference to our minds. Knowledge means a state of
mind: the knowledge of material things is a mental thing. We are
incapable of discussing the existence of an independent material
world: the very act is a contradiction. We can speak only of a
world presented to our own minds. By an illusion of language we
fancy that we are capable of contemplating a world which does not
enter into our own mental existence: but the attempt belies
itself, for this contemplation is an effort of mind."
"Solidity, extension, space--the foundation properties of the
material world--mean, as has been said above, certain movements
and energies of our own bodies, and exist in our minds in the
shape of feelings of force, allied with visible and tactile, and
other sensible impressions. The sense of the external is the
consciousness of particular energies and activities of our own."
(P. 376). "We seem to have no better way of assuring ourselves and
all mankind, that with the conscious movement of opening the eyes
there will always be a consciousness of light, than by saying that
the light exists as an independent fact, without any eyes to see
it. But if we consider the fact fairly we shall see that this
assertion errs, not simply in being beyond any evidence that we
can have, but also in being a self-contradiction. We are affirming
_that_ to have an existence out of our minds, which we cannot know
but as in our minds. In words we assert independent existence,
while in the very act of doing so we contradict ourselves. Even a
possible world implies a possible mind to conceive it, just as
much as an actual world implies an actual mind. The mistake of the
common modes of expression on this matter is the mistake of
supposing the abstractions of the mind to have a separate and
independent existence. Instead of looking upon the doctrine of an
external and independent world as a generalisation or abstraction
grounded on our particular experiences, summing up the past and
predicting the future, we have got into the way of maintaining the
abstraction to be an independent reality, the foundation, or
cause, or origin, of all these experiences."
To the same purpose Mr. Mansel remarks in his Bampton Lectures on
"The Limits of Religious Thought," page 52:
"A second characteristic of Consciousness is, that it is only
possible in the form of a _relation_. There must be a Subject or
person conscious, and an Object or thing of which he is conscious.
There can be no consciousness without the union of these two
factors; and in that union each exists only as it is related to
the other. The subject is a subject only in so far as it is
conscious of an object: the object is an object only in so far as
it is apprehended by a subject: and the destruction of either is
the destruction of consciousness itself. It is thus manifest that
a consciousness of the Absolute is equally self-contradictory with
that of the Infinite. . . Our whole notion of Existence is
necessarily relative, for it is existence as conceived by us. But
_Existence_, as we conceive it, is but a name for the several ways
in which objects are presented to our consciousness--a general
term embracing a variety of relations. . . To assume Absolute
Existence as an object of thought is thus to suppose a relation
existing when the related terms exist no longer. An object of
thought exists, as such, in and through its relation to a thinker;
while the Absolute, as such, is independent of all relation."
Dr. Henry More has also a passage asserting the essential
correlation on which I am here insisting (Immortality of the Soul,
ch. ii. p. 3). And Professor Ferrier, in his Institutes of
Metaphysic, has given much valuable elucidation respecting the
essential relativity of cognition.
Though this note is already long, I shall venture to add from an
eminent German critic--Trendelenburg--a passage which goes to the
same point.
"Das Sein ist als die absolute Position erklärt worden. Der
Begriff des Seins drücke blos das aus: es werde bei dem einfachen
Setzen eines _Was_ sein Bewenden haben. Es hat sich hier die
abstracte Vorstellung des Seins nur in eine verwandte Anschauung
umgekleidet; denn das Gesetzte steht in dem Raum da; und insofern
fordert die absolute Position schon den Begriff des seiendem
Etwas, das gesetzt wird. _Fragt man weiter, so ist in der
absoluten Position schon derjenige mitgedacht, der da setzt._ Das
Sein wird also _nicht unabhängig aus sich selbst bestimmt_,
sondern zur Erklärung _ein Verhältniss zu der Thätigkeit des
Gedankens herbeigezogen_.
"Aehnlich würde jede von vorn herein versuchte Bestimmung des
Denkens ausfallen. Man würde es nur durch einen Bezug zu den
Dingen erläutern können, welche in dem Denken Grund und Mass
finden. Wir begeben uns daher jeder Erklärung, und setzen eine
Vorstellung des Denkens und Seins voraus, in der Hoffnung dass
beide mit jedem Schritt der Untersuchung sich in sich selbst
bestimmen werden." "Indem wir Denken und Sein unterscheiden,
fragen wir, wie ist es möglich, dass sich im Erkennen Denken und
Sein vereinigt? _Diese Vereinigung sprechen wir vorläufig als eine
Thatsache aus, die das Theoretische wie das Praktische
beherrscht._" Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, sect. 3, pp.
103-104, Berlin, 1840.]
[Side-note: Object always relative to Subject--Either without the
other, impossible. Plato admits this in Sophistes.]
I cannot therefore agree with Plato in regarding the Protagorean
doctrine--Homo Mensura--as having any dependance upon, or any
necessary connection with, the other theory (canvassed in the
Theætêtus) which pronounces cognition to be sensible perception.
Objects of thought exist in relation to a thinking Subject; as
Objects of sight or touch exist in relation to a seeing or
touching Subject. And this we shall find Plato himself declaring
in the Sophistes (where his Eleatic disputant is introduced as
impugning a doctrine substantially the same as that of Plato
himself in the Phædon, Timæus, and elsewhere) as well as here in
the Theætêtus. In the Sophistes, certain philosophers (called the
Friends of Forms or Ideas) are noticed, who admitted that all
sensible or perceivable existence ([Greek: ge/nesis]--Fientia) was
relative to a (capable) sentient or percipient--but denied the
relativity of Ideas, and maintained that Ideas, Concepts,
Intelligible Entia, were not relative but absolute. The Eleate
combats these philosophers, and establishes against them--That the
Cogitable or Intelligible existence, Ens Rationis, was just as
much relative to an Intelligent or Cogitant subject, as
perceivable existence was relative to a Subject capable of
perceiving--That Existence, under both varieties, was nothing more
than a potentiality, correlating with a counter-potentiality
([Greek: to\ gnôsto\n] with [Greek: to\ gnôstiko/n], [Greek: to\
ai)sthêto\n] with [Greek: to\ ai)sthêtiko/n], and never realised
except in implication therewith.[27]
[Footnote 27: Plato, Sophistes, pp. 247-248.
The view taken of this matter by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in the
third chapter of the first Book of his System of Logic, is very
instructive; see especially pp. 65-66 (ed. 4th).
Aristippus (one of the Sokratici viri, contemporary of Plato) and
the Kyrenaic sect affirmed the doctrine--[Greek: o(/ti mo/na ta\
pa/thê katalêpta/]. Aristokles refutes them by saying that there
can be no [Greek: pa/thos] without both Object and
Subject--[Greek: poiou=n] and [Greek: pa/schon]. And he goes on
to declare that these three are of necessary co-existence or
consubstantiality. [Greek: A)lla\ mê\n a)na/gkê ge tri/a tau=ta
sunuphi/stasthai--to/ te pa/thos au)to/, kai\ to\ poiou=n, kai\
to\ pa/schon] (ap. Eusebium, Præp. Ev. xiv. 19, 1).
I apprehend that Aristokles by these words does not really refute
what Aristippus meant to affirm. Aristippus meant to affirm the
Relative, and to decline affirming anything beyond; and in this
Aristokles agrees, making the doctrine even more comprehensive by
showing that Object as well as Subject are relative also;
implicated both with each other and in the [Greek: pa/thos].]
[Side-note: Plato's representation of the Protagorean doctrine in
intimate conjunction with the Herakleitean.]
This doctrine of the Eleate in the Platonic Sophistes coincides
with the Protagorean--_Homo Mensura_--construed in its true
meaning: Object is implicated with, limited or measured by,
Subject: a doctrine proclaiming the relativeness of all objects
perceived, conceived, known, or felt--and the omnipresent
involution of the perceiving, conceiving, knowing, or feeling,
Subject: the object varying with the Subject. "As things appear to
me, so they are to me: as they appear to you, so they are to you."
This theory is just and important, if rightly understood and
explained: but whether Protagoras did so explain or understand it,
we cannot say; nor does the language of Plato enable us to make
out. Plato passes on from this theory to another, which he
supposes Protagoras to have held without distinctly stating it:
That there is no Ens distinguishable in itself or permanent, or
stationary: that all existences are in perpetual flux, motion,
change--acting and reacting upon each other, combining with or
disjoining from each other.[28]
[Footnote 28: Plato, Theætêt. p. 152 D.
Though Plato states the grounds of this theory in his ironical
way, as if it were an absurd fancy, yet it accidentally coincides
with the largest views of modern physical science. Absolute rest
is unknown in nature: all matter is in perpetual movement,
molecular as well as in masses.]
[Side-note: Relativity of sensible facts, as described by him.]
Turning to the special theory of Protagoras (Homo Mensura), and
producing arguments, serious or ironical in its defence, Sokrates
says--What you call colour has no definite place or existence
either within you or without you. It is the result of the passing
collision between your eyes and the flux of things suited to act
upon them. It is neither in the agent nor in the patient, but is
something special and momentary generated in passing between the
two. It will vary with the subject: it is not the same to you, to
another man, to a dog or horse, or even to yourself at different
times. The object measured or touched cannot be in itself either
great, or white, or hot: for if it were, it would not appear
different to another Subject. Nor can the Subject touching or
measuring be in itself great, or white, or hot: for if so, it
would always be so, and would not be differently modified when
applied to a different object. _Great_, _white_, _hot_, denote no
positive and permanent attribute either in Object or Subject, but
a passing result or impression generated between the two, relative
to both and variable with either.[29]
[Footnote 29: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 153-154. [Greek: o(\ dê\
e(/kaston ei)=nai/ phamen chrô=ma, ou)/te to\ prosba/llon ou)/te
to\ prosballo/menon e)/stai, a)lla\ metaxu/ ti e(kastô| i)/dion
gegono/s.]]
[Side-note: Relations are nothing in the object purely and simply
without a comparing subject.]
To illustrate this farther (continues Sokrates)--suppose we have
here six dice. If I compare them with three other dice placed by
the side of them, I shall call the six dice _more_ and _double_:
if I put twelve other dice by the side of them, I shall call the
six _fewer_ and _half_. Or take an old man--and put a growing
youth by his side. Two years ago the old man was taller than the
youth: now, the youth is grown, so that the old man is the shorter
of the two. But the old man, and the six dice, have remained all
the time unaltered, and equal to themselves. How then can either
of them become either greater or less? or how can either _really
be_ so, when they were not so before?[30]
[Footnote 30: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 154-155. Compare the reasoning
in the Phædon, pp. 96-97-101.]
[Side-note: Relativity twofold--to the comparing Subject--to
another object, besides the one directly described.]
The illustration here furnished by Sokrates brings out forcibly
the negation of the absolute, and the affirmation of universal
relativity in all conceptions, judgments, and predications, which
he ascribes to Protagoras and Herakleitus. The predication
respecting the six dice denotes nothing real, independent,
absolute, inhering in them: for they have undergone no change. It
is relative, and expresses a mental comparison made by me or some
one else. It is therefore relative in two different senses:--1. To
some other object with which the comparison of the dice is
made:--2. To me as comparing Subject, who determine the objects with
which the comparison shall be made.[31]--Though relativity in both
senses is comprehended by the Protagorean affirmation--Homo
Mensura--yet relativity in the latter sense is all which that
affirmation essentially requires. And this is true of all
propositions, comparative or not--whether there be or be not
reference to any other object beyond that which is directly
denoted. But Plato was here illustrating the larger doctrine which
he ascribes to Protagoras in common with Herakleitus: and
therefore the more complicated case of relativity might suit his
purpose better.
[Footnote 31: The Aristotelian Category of Relation ([Greek: ta\
pro\s ti/], Categor. p. 6, a. 36) designates one object
apprehended and named relatively to some other object--as
distinguished from object apprehended and named not thus
relatively, which Aristotle considers as _per se_ [Greek: kath'
au(to/] (Ethica Nikomach. i. p. 1096, a. 21). Aristotle omits or
excludes relativity of the object apprehended to the percipient or
concipient subject, which is the sort of relativity directly noted
by the Protagorean doctrine.
Occasionally Aristotle passes from relativity in the former sense
to relativity in the latter; as when he discusses [Greek:
e)pistêto\n] and [Greek: e)pistê/mê], alluded to in one of my
former notes on this dialogue. But he seems unconscious of any
transition. In the Categories, Object, as implicated with Subject
does not seem to have been distinctly present to his reflection.
In the third book of the Metaphysica, indeed, he discusses
professedly the opinion of Protagoras; and among his objections
against it, one is, that it makes everything relative or [Greek:
pro\s ti/] (Metaph. [Greek: G]. p. 1011, a. 20, b. 5). This is
hardly true in the sense which [Greek: pro\s ti/] bears as one of
his Categories: but it is true in the other sense to which I have
adverted.
A clear and full exposition of what is meant by the Relativity of
Human Knowledge, will be found in Mr. John Stuart Mill's most
recent work, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy,'
ch. ii. pp. 6-15.]
Sokrates now re-states that larger doctrine, in general terms, as
follows.
[Side-note: Statement of the doctrine of Herakleitus--yet so as to
implicate it with that of Protagoras.]
The universe is all flux or motion, divided into two immense
concurrent streams of force, one active, the other passive;
adapted one to the other, but each including many varieties. One
of these is Object: the other is, sentient, cognizant, concipient,
Subject. Object as well as Subject is, in itself and separately,
indeterminate and unintelligible--a mere chaotic Agent or Patient.
It is only by copulation and friction with each other that they
generate any definite or intelligible result. Every such
copulation, between parts adapted to each other, generates a twin
offspring: two correlative and inseparable results infinitely
diversified, but always born in appropriate pairs:[32] a definite
perception or feeling, on the subjective side--a definite thing
perceived or felt, on the objective. There cannot be one of these
without the other: there can be no objective manifestation without
its subjective correlate, nor any subjective without its
objective. This is true not merely about the external
senses--touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing--but also about the
internal,--hot and cold, pleasure and pain, desire, fear, and
all the countless variety of our feelings which have no separate
names.[33] Each of these varieties of feeling has its own object
co-existent and correlating with it. Sight, hearing, and smell,
move and generate rapidly and from afar; touch and taste, slowly
and only from immediate vicinity: but the principle is the same in
all. Thus, _e.g._, when the visual power of the eye comes into
reciprocal action with its appropriate objective agent, the result
between them is, that the visual power passes out of its abstract
and indeterminate state into a concrete and particular act of
vision--the seeing a white stone or wood: while the objective
force also passes out of its abstract and indeterminate state into
concrete--so that it is no longer whiteness, but a piece of white
stone or wood actually seen.[34]
[Footnote 32: Plato, Theætêt. p. 156 A. [Greek: ô(s to\ pa=n
ki/nêsis ê)=n, kai\ a)/llo para\ tou=to ou)de/n, tê=s de\
kinê/seôs du/o ei)/dê, plê/thei me\n a)/peiron e(ka/teron,
du/namin de\ to\ me\n poiei=n e)/chon, to\ de\ pa/schein. E)k de\
tê=s tou/tôn o(mili/as te kai\ tri/pseôs pro\s a)/llêla gi/gnetai
e)/kgona] plê/thei me\n a)/peira, di/duma de/--to\ me\n
ai)sthêto/n, to\ de\ ai)/sthêsis], a)ei\ sunekpi/ptousa kai\
gennôme/nê meta\ tou= ai)sthêtou=.]]
[Footnote 33: Plato, Theætêt. p. 156 B.]
[Footnote 34: Plato, Theætêt. p. 156 E. [Greek: o( me\n
o)phthalmo\s a)/ra o)/pseôs e)/mpleôs e)ge/neto kai\ o(ra=| dê\
to/te kai\ _e)ge/neto ou)/ ti o)/psis a)lla\ o)phthalmo\s o(rô=n_,
to\ de\ xuggennê=san to\ chrô=ma leuko/têtos perieplê/sthê kai\
_e)ge/neto ou) leuko/tês au)=_ a)lla\ leuko/n, ei)/te xu/lon
ei)/te li/thos ei)/te o(tiou=n xune/bê chrê=ma chrôsthê=nai tô=|
toiou/tô| chrô/mati.]
Plato's conception of the act of vision was--That fire darted
forth from the eyes of the percipient and came into confluence or
coalescence with fire approaching from the perceived object
(Plato, Timæus, pp. 45 C, 67 C).]
[Side-note: Agent and Patient--No absolute Ens.]
Accordingly, nothing can be affirmed to exist separately and by
itself. All existences, come only as twin and correlative
manifestations of this double agency. In fact neither of these
agencies can be conceived independently and apart from the other:
each of them is a nullity without the other.[35] If either of them
be varied, the result also will vary proportionally: each may be
in its turn agent or patient, according to the different partners
with which it comes into confluence.[36] It is therefore improper
to say--Such or such a thing _exists_. Existence absolute,
perpetual, and unchangeable is nowhere to be found: and all
phrases which imply it are incorrect, though we are driven to use
them by habit and for want of knowing better. All that is real is,
the perpetual series of changeful and transient conjunctions; each
Object, with a certain Subject,--each Subject, with a certain
Object.[37] This is true not merely of individual objects, but
also of those complex aggregates rationally apprehended which
receive generic names, _man_, animal, stone, &c.[38] You must not
therefore say that any thing _is_, absolutely and perpetually,
good, honourable, hot, white, hard, great--but only that it is so
felt or esteemed by certain subjects more or less numerous.[39]
[Footnote 35: Plato, Theætêt. p. 157 A. [Greek: e)pei\ kai\ to\
poiou=n ei)=nai ti kai\ to\ pa/schon au)= ti e)pi\ e(no\s noê=sai,
ô(/s phasin, ou)k ei)=nai pagi/ôs. Ou)/te ga\r poiou=n e)sti/ ti,
pri\n a)\n tô=| pa/schonti xune/lthê|--ou)/te pa/schon, pri\n a)\n
tô=| poiou=nti], &c.]
[Footnote 36: Plato, Theætêt. p. 157 A. [Greek: to/ te/ tini
xuneltho\n kai\ poiou=n a)/llô| au)= prospeso\n pa/schon
a)nepha/nê.]]
[Footnote 37: Plato, Theætêt. p. 157 A. [Greek: ou)de\n ei)=nai
e(\n au)to\ kath' au(to/, a)lla/ tini a)ei\ gi/gnesthai, to\ d'
ei)=nai panta/chothen e)xairete/on], &c.]
[Footnote 38: Plato, Theætêt. p. 157 B. [Greek: dei= de\ kai\
kata\ me/ros ou(/tô le/gein kai\ peri\ pollô=n a)throisthe/ntôn,
ô(=| dê\ a)throi/smati a)/nthrôpo/n te ti/thentai kai\ li/thon
kai\ e(/kaston zô=o/n te kai\ ei)=dos.]
In this passage I follow Heindorf's explanation which seems
dictated by the last word [Greek: ei)=dos]. Yet I am not sure that
Plato does really mean here the _generic_ aggregates. He had
before talked about sights, sounds, hot, cold, hard, &c., the
separate sensations. He may perhaps here mean simply individual
things as aggregates or [Greek: a)throi/smata]--a _man_, a
_stone_, &c.]
[Footnote 39: Plato, Theætêt. p. 157 E.]
[Side-note: Arguments derived from dreams, fevers, &c., may be
answered.]
The arguments advanced against this doctrine from the phenomena of
dreams, distempers, or insanity, admit (continues Sokrates) of a
satisfactory answer. A man who is dreaming, sick, or mad, believes
in realities different from, and inconsistent with, those which he
would believe in when healthy. But this is because he is, under
those peculiar circumstances, a different Subject, unlike what he
was before. One of the two factors of the result being thus
changed, the result itself is changed.[40] The cardinal principle
of Protagoras--the essential correlation, and indefeasible fusion,
of Subject and Object, exhibits itself in a perpetual series of
definite manifestations. To say that I (the Subject) perceive,--is
to say that I perceive some Object: to perceive and perceive
nothing, is a contradiction. Again, if an Object be sweet, it must
be sweet to some percipient Subject: sweet, but sweet to no one,
is impossible.[41] Necessity binds the essence of the percipient
to that of something perceived: so that every name which you
bestow upon either of them implies some reference to the other;
and no name can be truly predicated of either, which implies
existence (either perpetual or temporary) apart from the
other.[42]
[Footnote 40: Plato, Theætêt. p. 159.]
[Footnote 41: Plato, Theætêt. p. 160 A.]
[Footnote 42: Plato, Theætêt. p. 160 B. [Greek: e)/peiper ê(mô=n
ê( a)na/gkê tê\n ou)si/an sundei= me/n, sundei= de ou)deni\ tô=n
a)/llôn, ou)d' au)= ê(mi=n au)toi=s; a)llê/lois dê\ lei/petai
sundede/sthai] (_i. e._ [Greek: to\n ai)sthano/menon] and [Greek:
to\ poiou=n ai)stha/nesthai]). [Greek: Ô/ste ei)/te _tis ei)=nai
ti/ o)noma/zei, tini\ ei)=nai, ê)\ tino/s, ê)\ pro/s ti, r(ête/on
au)tô=|, ei)/te gi/gnesthai; au)to\ de\ e)ph' au(tou= ti ê)\ o)\n
ê)\ gigno/menon ou)/te au)tô=| lekte/on, ou)/t' a)/llou le/gontos
a)podekte/on_.]
Compare Aristot. Metaphys. [Greek: G]. 6, p. 1011, a. 23.]
[Side-note: Exposition of the Protagorean doctrine, as given here
by Sokrates is to a great degree just. You cannot explain the
facts of consciousness by independent Subject and Object.]
Such is the exposition which Sokrates is here made to give, of the
Protagorean doctrine. How far the arguments, urged by him in its
behalf, are such as Protagoras himself either really urged, or
would have adopted, we cannot say. In so far as the doctrine
asserts essential fusion and implication between Subject and
Object, with actual multiplicity of distinct Subjects--denying the
reality either of absolute and separate Subject, or of absolute
and separate Object[43]--I think it true and instructive. We are
reminded that when we affirm any thing about an Object, there is
always (either expressed or tacitly implied) a Subject or Subjects
(one, many, or all), _to whom_ the Object _is_ what it is declared
to be. This is the fundamental characteristic of consciousness,
feeling, and cognition, in all their actual varieties. All of them
are bi-polar or bi-lateral, admitting of being looked at either on
the subjective or on the objective side. Comparisons and
contrasts, gradually multiplied, between one consciousness and
another, lead us to distinguish the one of these points of view
from the other. In some cases, the objective view is brought into
light and prominence, and the subjective thrown into the dark and
put out of sight: in other cases, the converse operation takes
place. Sometimes the Ego or Subject is prominent, sometimes the
Mecum or Object.[44] Sometimes the Objective is as it were
divorced from the Subject, and projected outwards, so as to have
an illusory appearance of existing apart from and independently of
any Subject. In other cases, the subjective view is so exclusively
lighted up and conspicuous, that Object disappears, and we talk of
a mind conceiving, as if it had no correlative Concept. It is
possible, by abstraction, to indicate, to name, and to reason
about, the one of these two points of view without including
direct notice of the other: this is abstraction or logical
separation--a mental process useful and largely applicable, yet
often liable to be mistaken for real distinctness and duality. In
the present case, the two abstractions become separately so
familiar to the mind, that this supposed duality is conceived as
the primordial and fundamental fact: the actual, bilateral,
consciousness being represented as a temporary derivative state,
generated by the copulation of two factors essentially independent
of each other. Such a theory, however, while aiming at an
impracticable result, amounts only to an inversion of the truth.
It aims at explaining our consciousness as a whole; whereas all
that we can really accomplish, is to explain, up to a certain
point, the conditions of conjunction and sequence between
different portions of our consciousness. It also puts the
primordial in the place of the derivative, and transfers the
derivative to the privilege of the primordial. It attempts to find
a generation for what is really primordial--the total series of
our manifold acts of consciousness, each of a bilateral character,
subjective on one side and objective on the other: and it assigns
as the generating factors two concepts obtained by abstraction
from these very acts,--resulting from multiplied comparisons,--and
ultimately exaggerated into an illusion which treats the logical
separation as if it were bisection in fact and reality.
[Footnote 43: Aristotle, in a passage of the treatise De Animâ
(iii. 1, 2-4-7-8, ed. Trendelenburg, p. 425, b. 25, p. 426, a.
15-25, Bekk.), impugns an opinion of certain antecedent [Greek:
phusio/logoi] whom he does not specify; which opinion seems
identical with the doctrine of Protagoras. These philosophers
said, that "there was neither white nor black without vision, nor
savour without the sense of taste". Aristotle says that they were
partly right, partly wrong. They were right in regard to the
actual, wrong in regard to the potential. The actual manifestation
of the perceived is one and the same with that of the percipient,
though the two are not the same logically in the view of the
reflecting mind ([Greek: ê( de\ tou= ai)sthêtou= e)ne/rgeia kai\
tê=s ai)sthê/seôs ê( au)tê\ me/n e)sti kai\ mi/a, to\ d' ei)=nai
ou) tau)to\n au)tai=s]). But this is not true when we speak of
them potentially--[Greek: dichô=s ga\r legome/nês tê=s
ai)sthê/seôs kai\ tou= ai)sthêtou=, tô=n me\n kata\ du/namin tô=n
de\ kat' e)ne/rgeian, e)pi/ tou/tôn me\n sumbai/nei to\ lechthe/n,
e)pi\ de\ tô=n e(te/rôn ou) sumbai/nei. A)ll' e)kei=noi a(plô=s
e)/legon peri\ tô=n legome/nôn ou)ch a(plô=s.]
I think that the distinction, which Aristotle insists upon as a
confutation of these philosophers, is not well founded. What he
states, in very just language, about _actual perception_ is
equally true about _potential perception_. As the present fact of
actual perception implicates essentially a determinate percipient
subject with a determinate perceived object, and admits of being
looked at either from the one point of view or from the other--so
the concept of potential perception implicates in like manner an
indeterminate perceivable with an indeterminate subject competent
to perceive. The perceivable or cogitable has no meaning except in
relation to some Capax Percipiendi or Capax Cogitandi.]
[Footnote 44: The terms Ego and Mecum, to express the antithesis
of these two [Greek: lo/gô| mo/non chôrista\], are used by
Professor Ferrier in his very acute treatise, the Institutes of
Metaphysic, pp. 93-96. The same antithesis is otherwise expressed
by various modern writers in the terms Ego and non-Ego--le moi et
le non-moi. I cannot think that this last is the proper way of
expressing it. You do not want to negative the Ego, but to declare
its essential implication with a variable correlate; to point out
the bilateral character of the act of consciousness. The two are
not merely _Relata secundum dici_ but _Relata secundum esse_, to
use a distinction recognised in the scholastic logic.
The implication of Subject and Object is expressed in a peculiar
manner (though still clearly) by Aristotle in the treatise De
Animâ, iii. 8, 1, 431, b. 21. [Greek: ê( psuchê\ ta\ o)/nta _pô/s_
e)sti pa/nta; ê)\ ga\r ai)sthêta\ ta\ o)/nta ê)\ noêta/. e)sti\ d'
ê( e)pistê/mê me\n ta\ e)pistêta/ _pôs_, ê( d' ai)/sthêsis ta\
ai)sthêta/.] The adverb [Greek: pôs] ([Greek: tro/pon tina/], as
Simplikius explains it, fol. 78, b. 1) here deserves attention.
"The soul is all existing things _in a certain way_ (or looked at
under a certain aspect). All things are either Percepta or
Cogitata: now Cognition is in a certain sense the
Cognita--Perception is the Percepta." He goes on to say that the
Percipient Mind is the Form of Percepta, while the matter of Percepta
is without: but that the Cogitant Mind is identical with Cogitata,
for they have no matter (iii. 4, 12, p. 430, a. 3, with the
commentary of Simplikius p. 78, b. 17, f. 19, a. 12). This is in
other words the Protagorean doctrine--That the mind is the measure
of all existences; and that this is even more true about [Greek:
noêta\] than about [Greek: ai)sthêta/]. That doctrine is
completely independent of the theory, that [Greek: e)pistê/mê] is
[Greek: ai)/sthêsis].
It is in conformity with this affirmation of Aristotle (partially
approved even by Cudworth--see Mosheim's Transl. of Intell. Syst.
Vol. II. ch. viii. pp. 27-28)--[Greek: ê( psuchê\ ta\ o)/nta pô/s
e)sti pa/nta]--that Mr. John Stuart Mill makes the following
striking remark about the number of ultimate Laws of Nature:--
"It is useful to remark, that the ultimate Laws of Nature cannot
possibly be less numerous than the distinguishable sensations or
other feelings of our nature: those, I mean, which are
distinguishable from one another in quality, and not merely in
quantity or degree. For example, since there is a phenomenon _sui
generis_ called colour, which our consciousness testifies to be
not a particular degree of some other phenomenon, as heat, or
odour, or motion, but intrinsically unlike all others, it follows
that there are ultimate laws of colour . . The ideal limit
therefore of the explanation of natural phenomena would be to show
that each distinguishable variety of our sensations or other
states of consciousness has only one sort of cause." (System of
Logic, Book iii. ch. 14, s. 2.)]
[Side-note: Plato's attempt to get behind the phenomena. Reference
to a double potentiality--Subjective and Objective.]
In Plato's exposition of the Protagorean theory, the true doctrine
held by Protagoras,[45] and the illusory explanation (whether
belonging to him or to Plato himself), are singularly blended
together. He denies expressly all separate existence either of
Subject or Object--all possibility of conceiving or describing the
one as a reality distinct from the other. He thus acknowledges
consciousness and cognition as essentially bilateral. Nevertheless
he also tries to explain the generation of these acts of
consciousness, by the hypothesis of a _latens processus_ behind
them and anterior to them--two continuous moving forces, agent and
patient, originally distinct, conspiring as joint factors to a
succession of compound results. But when we examine the language
in which Plato describes these forces, we see that he conceives
them only as Abstractions and Potentialities;[46] though he
ascribes to them a metaphorical copulation and generation. "Every
thing is motion (or change): of which there are two sorts, each
infinitely manifold: one, having power to act--the other having
power to suffer." Here instead of a number of distinct facts of
consciousness, each bilateral--we find ourselves translated by
abstraction into a general potentiality of consciousness, also
essentially bilateral and multiple. But we ought to recollect,
that the Potential is only a concept abstracted from the
actual,--and differing from it in this respect, that it includes what
has been and what may be, as well as what is. But it is nothing new
and distinct by itself: it cannot be produced as a substantive
antecedent to the actual, and as if it afforded explanation
thereof. The general proposition about motion or change (above
cited in the words of Plato), as far as it purports to get behind
the fact of consciousness and to assign its cause or antecedent--is
illusory. But if considered as a general expression for that
fact itself, in the most comprehensive terms--indicating the
continuous thread of separate, ever-changing acts of
consciousness, each essentially bilateral, or subjective as well
as objective--in this point of view the proposition is just and
defensible.[47]
[Footnote 45: The elaborate Dissertation of Sir William Hamilton,
on the Philosophy of the Unconditioned (standing first in his
'Discussions on Philosophy'), is a valuable contribution to
metaphysical philosophy. He affirms and shows, "That the
Unconditioned is incognisable and inconceivable: its notion being
only a negation of the Conditioned, which last can alone be
positively known and conceived" (p. 12); refuting the opposite
doctrine as proclaimed, with different modifications, both by
Schelling and Cousin.
In an Appendix to this Dissertation, contained in the same volume
(p. 608), Sir W. Hamilton not only re-asserts the doctrine ("Our
whole knowledge of mind and matter is relative,
conditioned--relatively conditioned. Of things absolutely or in
themselves, be they external, be they internal, we know nothing, or
know them only as incognisable," &c.)--but affirms farther that
philosophers of every school, with the exception of a few late absolute
theorisers in Germany, have always held and harmoniously re-echoed
the same doctrine.
In proof of such unanimous agreement, he cites passages from
seventeen different philosophers.
The first name on his list stands as follows:--"1. Protagoras--(as
reported by Plato, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus, Diogenes Laertius,
&c.)--Man is (for himself) the measure of all things".
Sir William Hamilton understands the Protagorean doctrine as I
understand it, and as I have endeavoured to represent it in the
present chapter. It has been very generally misconceived.
I cannot, however, agree with Sir William Hamilton, in thinking
that this theory respecting the Unconditioned and the Absolute,
has been the theory generally adopted by philosophers. The
passages which he cites from other authors are altogether
insufficient to prove such an affirmation.]
[Footnote 46: Plato, Theætêt. p. 156 A. [Greek: tê=s de\ kinê/seôs
du/o ei)/dê, plê/thei me\n a)/peiron e(ka/teron, du/namin de\ to\
me\n poiei=n e)/chon, to\ de\ pa/schein.]]
[Footnote 47: In that distinction, upon which Aristotle lays so
much stress, between Actus and Potentia, he declares Actus or
actuality to be the Prius--Potentia or potentiality to be the
Posterius. See Metaphysica, [Greek: Th]. 8, 1049, b. 5 seqq.; De
Animâ, ii. 4, 415, a. 17. The Potential is a derivative from the
Actual--derived by comparison, abstraction, and logical analysis:
a Mental concept, helping us to describe, arrange, and reason
about, the multifarious acts of sense or consciousness--but not an
anterior generating reality.
Turgot observes (OEuvres, vol. iii. pp. 108-110; Article in the
Encyclopédie, _Existence_):--
"Le premier fondement de la notion de l'_existence_ est la
conscience de notre propre sensation, et le sentiment du _moi_ qui
résulte de cette conscience. La relation nécessaire entre l'être
appercevant, et l'être apperçu considéré hors du _moi_, suppose
dans les deux termes la même réalité. Il y a dans l'un et dans
l'autre un fondement de cette relation, que l'homme, s'il avoit un
langage, pourroit désigner par le nom commun d'_existence_ ou de
_présence_: car ces deux notions ne seroient point encore
distinguées l'une de l'autre. . . .
"Mais il est très-important d'observer que ni la simple sensation
des objets présens, ni la peinture que fait l'imagination des
objets absens, ni le simple rapport de distance ou d'activité
réciproque, commun aux uns et aux autres, ne sont précisément la
chose que l'esprit voudroit désigner par le nom général
d'_existence_; c'est le fondement même de ces rapports, supposé
commun au _moi_, à l'objet vu et à l'objet simplement distant,
sur lequel tombe véritablement et le nom d'_existence_ et notre
affirmation, lorsque nous disons qu'une chose _existe_. Ce
fondement n'est ni ne peut être connu immédiatement, et ne nous
est indiqué que par les rapports différents qui le supposent: nous
nous en formons cependant une espèce d'idée que nous tirons par
voie d'abstraction du témoignage que la conscience nous rend de
nous-mêmes et de notre sensation actuelle: c'est-à-dire, que nous
transportons en quelque sorte cette conscience du _moi_ sur les
objets extérieurs, par une espèce d'assimilation vague, démentie
aussitôt** par la séparation de tout ce qui caractérise le _moi_,
mais qui ne suffit pas moins pour devenir le fondement _d'une
abstraction ou d'un signe commun, et pour être l'objet de nos
jugemens_."]
It is to be remembered, that the doctrine here criticised is
brought forward by the Platonic Sokrates as a doctrine not his
own, but held by others; among whom he ranks Protagoras as one.
Having thus set forth in his own language, and as an advocate, the
doctrine of Protagoras, Sokrates proceeds to impugn it: in his
usual rambling and desultory way, but with great dramatic charm
and vivacity. He directs his attacks alternately against the two
doctrines: 1. _Homo Mensura_: 2. Cognition is sensible perception.
I shall first notice what he advances against _Homo Mensura_.
[Side-note: Arguments advanced by the Platonic Sokrates against the
Protagorean doctrine. He says that it puts the wise and foolish on
a par--that it contradicts the common consciousness. Not every
one, but the wise man only, is a measure.]
It puts every man (he says) on a par as to wisdom and
intelligence: and not only every man, but every horse, dog, frog,
and other animal along with him. Each man is a measure for
himself: all his judgments and beliefs are true: he is therefore
as wise as Protagoras and has no need to seek instruction from
Protagoras.[48] Reflection, study, and dialectic discussion, are
superfluous and useless to him: he is a measure to himself on the
subject of geometry, and need not therefore consult a professed
geometrician like Theodôrus.[49]
[Footnote 48: Plato, Theætêt. p. 161. Compare Plato, Kratylus, p.
386 C, where the same argument is employed.]
[Footnote 49: Plato, Theætêt. p. 169 A.]
The doctrine is contradicted (continues Sokrates) by the common
opinions of mankind: for no man esteems himself a measure on all
things. Every one believes that there are some things on which he
is wiser than his neighbour--and others on which his neighbour is
wiser than he. People are constantly on the look out for teachers
and guides.[50] If Protagoras advances an opinion which others
declare to be false, he must, since he admits their opinion to be
true, admit his own opinion to be false.[51] No animal, nor any
common man, is a measure; but only those men, who have gone
through special study and instruction in the matter upon which
they pronounce.[52]
[Footnote 50: Plato, Theætêt. p. 170.]
[Footnote 51: Plato, Theætêt. p. 171 B. [Greek: Ou)kou=n tê\n
au(tou= a)\n pseudê= xugchôroi=, ei) tê\n tô=n ê(goume/nôn au)to\n
pseu/desthai o(mologei= a)lêthê= ei)=nai?]]
[Footnote 52: Plato, Theætêt. p. 171 C.]
[Side-note: In matters of present sentiment every man can judge for
himself. Where future consequences are involved special knowledge
is required.]
In matters of present and immediate sensation, hot, cold, dry,
moist, sweet, bitter, &c., Sokrates acknowledges that every man
must judge _for himself_, and that what each pronounces is true
_for himself_. So too, about honourable or base, just or unjust,
holy or unholy--whatever rules any city may lay down, are true
_for itself_: no man, no city,--is wiser upon these matters than
any other.[53] But in regard to what is good, profitable,
advantageous, healthy, &c., the like cannot be conceded. Here
(says Sokrates) one man, and one city, is decidedly wiser, and
judges more truly, than another. We cannot say that the judgment
of each is true;[54] or that what every man or every city
anticipates to promise good or profit, will necessarily realise
such anticipations. In such cases, not merely present sentiment,
but future consequences are involved.
[Footnote 53: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 172 A, 177 E.]
[Footnote 54: Plato, Theætêt. p. 172.]
Here then we discover the distinction which Plato would draw.[55]
Where present sentiment alone is involved, as in hot and cold,
sweet and bitter, just and unjust, honourable and base, &c., there
each is a judge for himself, and one man is no better judge than
another. But where future consequences are to be predicted, the
ignorant man is incapable: none but the professional Expert, or
the prophet,[56] is competent to declare the truth. When a dinner
is on table, each man among the guests can judge whether it is
good: but while it is being prepared, none but the cook can judge
whether it _will be_ good.[57] This is one Platonic objection
against the opinion of Protagoras, when he says that every opinion
of every man is true. Another objection is, that opinions of
different men are opposite and contradictory,[58] some of them
contradicting the Protagorean dictum itself.
[Footnote 55: Plato, Theætêt. p. 178.]
[Footnote 56: Plato, Theætêt. p. 179. [Greek: ei)/ pê| tou\s
suno/ntas e)/peithen, o(/ti kai\ to\ me/llon e)/sesthai/ te kai\
do/xein ou)/te ma/ntis ou)/te tis a)/llos a)/meinon kri/neien a)\n
ê)\ au)to\s au(tô=|.]]
[Footnote 57: Plato, Theætêt. p. 178.]
[Footnote 58: Plato, Theætêt. p. 179 B.
_Theodor._ [Greek: E)kei/nê| moi dokei= ma/lista a(li/skesthai o(
lo/gos, a(lisko/menos kai\ tau/tê|, ê)=| ta\s tô=n a)/llôn do/xas
kuri/as poiei=, au(=tai de\ e)pha/nêsan tou\s e)kei/nou lo/gous
ou)damê=| a)lêthei=s ê(gou/menai.]
_Sokrat._ [Greek: Pollachê=| kai\ a)/llê| a)\n to/ ge toiou=ton
a(loi/ê, mê\ pa=san panto\s a)lêthê= do/xan ei)=nai; peri\ de\ to\
paro\n e(ka/stô| pa/thos, e)x ô(=n ai( ai)sthê/seis kai\ ai( kata\
tau/tas do/xai gi/gnontai . . . I)/sôs de\ ou)de\n le/gô,
a)na/lôtoi ga/r, ei) e)/tuchon, ei)si/n.]]
[Side-note: Plato, when he impugns the doctrine of Protagoras,
states that doctrine without the qualification properly belonging
to it. All belief relative to the condition of the believing
mind.]
Such are the objections urged by Sokrates against the Protagorean
doctrine--_Homo Mensura_. There may have been perhaps in the
treatise of Protagoras, which unfortunately we do not possess,
some reasonings or phrases countenancing the opinions against
which Plato here directs his objections. But so far as I can
collect, even from the words of Plato himself when he professes to
borrow the phraseology of his opponent, I cannot think that
Protagoras ever delivered the opinion which Plato here
refutes--_That every opinion of every man is true_. The opinion really
delivered by Protagoras appears to have been[59]--_That every
opinion delivered by every man is true, to that man himself_. But
Plato, when he impugns it, leaves out the final qualification;
falling unconsciously into the fallacy of passing (as logicians
say) _a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter_.[60] The
qualification thus omitted by Plato forms the characteristic
feature of the Protagorean doctrine, and is essential to the
phraseology founded upon it. Protagoras would not declare any
proposition to be true absolutely, or false absolutely. The
phraseology belonging to that doctrine is forced upon him by
Plato. Truth Absolute there is none, according to Protagoras. All
truth is and must be truth relative to some one or more persons,
either actually accepting and believing in it, or conceived as
potential believers under certain circumstances. Moreover since
these believers are a multitude of individuals, each with his own
peculiarities--so no truth can be believed in, except under the
peculiar measure of the believing individual mind. What a man
adopts as true, and what he rejects as false, are conditioned
alike by this limit: a limit not merely different in different
individuals, but variable and frequently varying in the same
individual. You cannot determine a dog, or a horse, or a child to
believe in the Newtonian astronomy: you could not determine the
author of the Principia in 1687 to believe what the child Newton
had believed in 1647.[61] To say that what is true to one man, is
false to another--that what _was_ true to an individual as a child
or as a youth, becomes false to him in his advanced years, is no
real contradiction: though Plato, by omitting the qualifying
words, presents it as if it were such. In every man's mind, the
beliefs of the past have been modified or reversed, and the
beliefs of the present are liable to be modified or reversed, by
subsequent operative causes: by new supervening sensations,
emotions, intellectual comparisons, authoritative teaching, or
society, and so forth.
[Footnote 59: Plato, Theætêt. p. 152 A. [Greek: Ou)kou=n ou(/tô
pôs le/gei] (Protagoras) [Greek: ô(s oi(=a me\n e(/kasta e)moi\
phai/netai, toiau=ta me/n e)stin e)moi/--oi(=a de\ soi/, toiau=ta
de\ au)= soi/.] 158 A. [Greek: ta\ phaino/mena e(ka/stô| tau=ta
kai\ ei)=nai tou/tô| ô(=| phai/netai.] 160 C. [Greek: A)lêthê\s
a)/ra e)moi\ ê( e)mê\ ai)/sthêsis; tê=s ga\r e)mê=s ou)si/as a)ei/
e)sti; kai\ e)gô\ kritê\s kata\ to\n Prôtago/ran tô=n te o)/ntôn
e)moi/, ô(s e)/sti, kai\ tô=n mê\ o)/ntôn, ô(s ou)k e)/stin.]
Comp. also pp. 166 D, 170 A, 177 C.
Instead of saying [Greek: ai)/sthêsis] (in the passage just cited,
p. 160 D), we might with quite equal truth put [Greek: A)lêthê\s
a)/ra e)moi\ ê( e)mê\ _no/êsis_; tê=s ga\r e)mê=s ou)si/as a)ei/
e)/stin]. In this respect [Greek: ai)/sthêsis] and [Greek:
no/êsis] are on a par. [Greek: No/êsis] is just as much relative
to [Greek: o( noô=n] as [Greek: ai)/sthêsis] to [Greek: o(
ai)sthano/menos].
Sextus Empiricus adverts to the doctrines of Protagoras (mainly to
point out how they are distinguished from those of the Sceptical
school, to which he himself belongs) in Pyrrhon. Hypot. i. sects.
215-219; adv. Mathematicos, vii. s. 60-64-388-400. He too imputes
to Protagoras both the two doctrines. 1. That man is the measure
of all things: that what appears to each person is, _to him_: that
all truth is thus relative. 2. That all phantasms, appearances,
opinions, are _true_. Sextus reasons at some length (390 seq.)
against this doctrine No. 2, and reasons very much as Protagoras
himself would have reasoned, since he appeals to individual
sentiment and movement of the individual mind ([Greek: ou)k
ô(sau/tôs ga\r kinou/metha], 391-400). It appears to me perfectly
certain that Protagoras advanced the general thesis of Relativity:
we see this as well from Plato as from Sextus--[Greek: kai\
ou(/tôs ei)sa/gei to\ pro/s ti--tô=n pro/s ti ei)=nai tê\n
a)lêthei/an] (Steinhart is of opinion that these words [Greek:
tô=n pro/s ti ei)=nai tê\n a)lêthei/an] are an addition of Sextus
himself, and do not describe the doctrine of Protagoras; an
opinion from which I dissent, and which is contradicted by Plato
himself: Steinhart, Einleitung, note 8). If Protagoras also
advanced the doctrine--all opinions are true--this was not
consistent with his cardinal principle of relativity. Either he
himself did not take care always to enunciate the qualifications
and limitations which his theory requires, and which in common
parlance are omitted--Or his opponents left out the limitations
which he annexed, and impugned the opinion as if it stood without
any. This last supposition I think the most probable.
The doctrine of Protagoras is correctly given by Sextus in the
Pyrrhon. Hypot.]
[Footnote 60: Aristotle, in commenting on the Protagorean formula,
falls into a similar inaccuracy in slurring over the restrictive
qualification annexed by Protagoras. Metaphysic. [Greek: G]. p.
1009, a. 6. Compare hereupon Bonitz's note upon the passage, p.
199 of his edition.
This transition without warning, _à dicto secundum quid ad dictum
simpliciter_, is among the artifices ascribed by Plato to the
Sophists Euthydêmus and Dionysodôrus (Plat. Euthyd. p. 297 D).]
[Footnote 61: The argument produced by Plato to discredit the
Protagorean theory--that it puts the dog or the horse on a level
with man--furnishes in reality a forcible illustration of the
truth of the theory.
Mr. James Harris, the learned Aristotelian of the last century,
remarks, in his Dialogue on Happiness (Works, ed. 1772, pp.
143-168):--
"Every particular Species is, itself to itself, the Measure of all
things in the Universe. As things vary in their relations to it,
they vary also in their value. If their value be ever doubtful, it
can noway be adjusted but by recurring with accuracy to the
natural State of the Species, and to those several Relations which
such a State of course creates."]
[Side-note: All exposition and discussion is an assemblage of
individual judgments and affirmations. This fact is disguised by
elliptical forms of language.]
The fact, that all exposition and discussion is nothing more than
an assemblage of individual judgments, depositions, affirmations,
negations, &c, is disguised from us by the elliptical form in
which it is conducted. For example:--I, who write this book--can
give nothing more than my own report, as a witness, of facts known
to me, and of what has been said, thought, or done by others,--for
all which I cite authorities:--and my own conviction, belief or
disbelief, as to the true understanding thereof, and the
conclusions deducible. I produce the reasons which justify my
opinion: I reply to those reasons which have been supposed by
others to justify the opposite. It is for the reader to judge how
far my reasons appear satisfactory to his mind.[62] To deliver my
own convictions, is all that is in my power: and if I spoke with
full correctness and amplitude, it would be incumbent on me to
avoid pronouncing any opinion to be _true_ or _false_ simply: I
ought to say, it is _true to me--or false to me_. But to repeat
this in every other sentence, would be a tiresome egotism. It is
understood once for all by the title-page of the book: an opponent
will know what he has to deal with, and will treat the opinions
accordingly. If any man calls upon me to give him absolute truth,
and to lay down the canon of evidence for identifying it--I cannot
comply with the request, any farther than to deliver my own best
judgment, what is truth--and to declare what is the canon of
evidence which guides my own mind. Each reader must determine for
himself whether he accepts it or not. I might indeed clothe my own
judgments in oracular and vehement language: I might proclaim them
as authoritative dicta: I might speak as representing the Platonic
Ideal, Typical Man,--or as inspired by a [Greek: dai/môn] like
Sokrates: I might denounce opponents as worthless men, deficient
in all the sentiments which distinguish men from brutes, and
meriting punishment as well as disgrace. If I used all these harsh
phrases, I should only imitate what many authors of repute think
themselves entitled to say, about THEIR beliefs and convictions.
Yet in reality, I should still be proclaiming nothing beyond my
own feelings:--the force of emotional association, and antipathy
towards opponents, which had grown round these convictions in my
own mind. Whether I speak in accordance with others, or in
opposition to others, in either case I proclaim my own reports,
feelings and judgments--nothing farther. I cannot escape from the
Protagorean limit or measures.[63]
[Footnote 62: M. Destutt Tracy observes as follows:--
"De même que toutes nos propositions peuvent être ramenées à la
forme de propositions énonciatives, parce qu'au fond elles
expriment toutes un jugement; de même, toutes nos propositions
énonciatives peuvent ensuite être toujours réduites à n'être
qu'une de celles-ci: 'je pense, je sens, ou je perçois, que telle
chose est de telle manière, ou que tel être produit tel
effet'--_propositions dont nous sommes nous-mêmes le sujet, parce
qu'au fond nous sommes toujours le subjet de tous nos jugemens_,
puisqu'ils n'expriment jamais qu'une impression que nous
éprouvons." (Idéologie: Supplément à la première Section, vol. iv.
p. 165, ed. 1825 duodec.)
"On peut même dire que comme nous ne sentons, ne savons, et ne
connaissons, rien que par rapport à nous, l'idée, sujet de la
proposition, est toujours en définitif notre moi; car quand je dis
_cet arbre est vert_, je dis réellement _je sens, je sais, je
vois, que cet arbre est vert_. Mais _précisément parce que ce
préambule se trouve toujours et nécessairement compris dans toutes
nos propositions, nous le supprimons quand nous voulons_; et toute
idée peut être le sujet de la proposition." (Principes Logiques,
vol. iv. ch. viii. p. 231.)]
[Footnote 63: Sokrates himself states as much as this in the
course of his reply to the doctrine of Protagoras, Theætêt. 171
D.: [Greek: a)ll' ê(mi=n a)na/gkê, oi)=mai, chrê=sthai ê(mi=n
au)toi=s . . . kai\ ta\ dokou=nta a)ei/, tau=ta le/gein.]
The necessity ([Greek: a)na/gkê]) to which Sokrates here adverts,
is well expressed by M. Degérando. "En jugeant ce que pensent les
autres hommes, en comprenant ce qu'ils éprouvent, nous ne sortons
point en effet de nous-mêmes, comme on seroit tenté de le croire.
C'est dans nos propres idées que nous voyons leurs idées, leurs
manières d'être, leur existence même. Le monde entier ne nous est
connu que dans une sorte de chambre obscure: et lorsqu'au sortir
d'une société nombreuse nous croyons avoir lu dans les esprits et
dans les coeurs, avoir observé des caractères, et senti (si je
puis dire ainsi) la vie d'un grand nombre d'hommes--nous ne
faisons en effet que sortir d'une grande galerie dont notre
imagination a fait tous les frais; dont elle a créé tous les
personnages, et dessiné, avec plus ou moins de vérité, tous les
tableaux." (Degérando, Des Signes et de l'Art de Penser, vol. i.
ch. v. p. 132.)]
[Side-note: Argument--That the Protagorean doctrine equalises all
men and animals. How far true. Not true in the sense requisite to
sustain Plato's objection.]
To this theory Plato imputes as a farther consequence, that it
equalises all men and all animals. No doubt, the measure or limit
as generically described, bears alike upon all: but it does not
mark the same degree in all. Each man's bodily efforts are
measured or limited by the amount of his physical force: this is
alike true of all men: yet it does not follow that the physical
force of all men is equal. The dog, the horse, the new-born child,
the lunatic, is each a measure of truth to himself: the
philosopher is so also to himself: this is alike true, whatever
may be the disparity of intelligence: and is rather more obviously
true when the disparity is great, because the lower intelligence
has then a very narrow stock of beliefs, and is little modifiable
by the higher. But though the Protagorean doctrine declares the
dog or the child to be a measure of truth--each to himself--it
does not declare either of them to be a measure of truth to me, to
you, or to any ordinary by-stander. How far any person is a
measure of truth to others, depends upon the estimation in which
he is held by others: upon the belief which they entertain
respecting his character or competence. Here is a new element let
in, of which Plato, in his objection to the Protagorean doctrine,
takes no account. When he affirms that Protagoras by his
equalising doctrine acknowledged himself to be no better in point
of wisdom and judgment than a dog or a child, this inference must
be denied.[64] The Protagorean doctrine is perfectly consistent
with great diversities of knowledge, intellect, emotion, and
character, between one man and another. Such diversities are
recognised in individual belief and estimation, and are thus
comprehended in the doctrine. Nor does Protagoras deny that men
are teachable and modifiable. The scholar after being taught will
hold beliefs different from those which he held before. Protagoras
professed to know more than others, and to teach them: others on
their side also believed that he knew more than they, and came to
learn it. Such belief on both sides, noway contradicts the general
doctrine here under discussion. What the scholar believes to be
true, is still true to him: among those things which he believes
to be true, one is, that the master knows more than he: in coming
to be taught, he acts upon his own conviction. To say that a man
is wise, is to say, that he is wise _in some one's estimation_:
your own or that of some one else. Such estimation is always
implied, though often omitted in terms. Plato remarks very truly,
that every one believes some others to be on certain matters wiser
than himself. In other words, what is called authority--that
predisposition to assent, with which we hear the statements and
opinions delivered by some other persons--is one of the most
operative causes in determining human belief. The circumstances of
life are such as to generate this predisposition in every one's
mind to a greater or less degree, and towards some persons more
than towards others.
[Footnote 64: Plato, Theætêt. p. 161 D. [Greek: o( d' a)/ra
e)tu/gchanen ô)\n ei)s phro/nêsin ou)de\n belti/ôn batra/chou
guri/nou, mê\ o(/ti a)/llou tou a)nthrô/pôn.] I substitute the dog
or horse as illustrations.]
[Side-note: Belief on authority is true to the believer
himself--The efficacy of authority resides in the believer's own mind.]
Belief on authority is true to the believer himself, like all his
other beliefs, according to the Protagorean doctrine: and in
acting upon it,--in following the guidance of A, and not following
the guidance of B,--he is still a measure to himself. It is not to
be supposed that Protagoras ever admitted all men to be equally
wise, though Plato puts such an admission into his mouth as an
inference undeniable and obvious. His doctrine affirms something
altogether different:--that whether you believe yourself to be
wise or unwise, in either case the belief is equally your
own--equally the result of your own mental condition and
predisposition,--equally true to yourself,--and equally an item
among the determining conditions of your actions. That the beliefs
and convictions of one person might be modified by another, was a
principle held by Protagoras not less than by Sokrates: the former
employed as his modifying instrument, eloquent lecturing--the
latter, dialectical cross-examination. Both of them recognise the
belief of the person to whom they address themselves as true to
him, yet at the same time as something which may be modified and
corrected, by appealing to what they thought the better parts of
it against the worse.
[Side-note: Protagorean formula--is false, to those who dissent
from it.]
Again--Sokrates imputes it as a contradiction to Protagoras--"Your
doctrine is pronounced to be false by many persons: but you admit
that the belief of all persons is true: therefore your doctrine is
false".[65] Here also Plato omits the qualification annexed by
Protagoras to his general principle--Every man's belief is
true--that is, true _to him_. That a belief should be true, to one man,
and false to another--is not only no contradiction to the formula
of Protagoras, but is the very state of things which his formula
contemplates. He of course could only proclaim it as true to
himself. It is the express purpose of his doctrine to disallow the
absolutely true and the absolutely false. His own formula, like
every other opinion, is false to those who dissent from it: but it
is not false absolutely, any more than any other doctrine. Plato
therefore does not make out his charge of contradiction.
[Footnote 65: Plato, Theætêt. p. 171 A. Sextus Empiric. (adv.
Mathem. vii. 61) gives a pertinent answer to this objection.]
[Side-note: Plato's argument--That the wise man alone is a
measure--Reply to it.]
Some men (says Sokrates) have learnt,--have bestowed study on
special matters,--have made themselves wise upon those matters.
Others have not done the like, but remain ignorant. It is the wise
man only who is a measure: the ignorant man neither is so, nor
believes himself to be so, but seeks guidance from the wise.[66]
[Footnote 66: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 171 C, 179 B.]
Upon this we may remark--First, that even when the untaught men
are all put aside, and the erudites or Experts remain alone--still
these very erudites or Experts, the men of special study, are
perpetually differing among themselves; so that we cannot
recognise one as a measure, without repudiating the authority of
the rest.[67] If by a measure, Plato means an infallible measure,
he will not find it in this way: he is as far from the absolute as
before. Next, it is perfectly correct that if any man be known to
have studied or acquired experience on special matters, his
opinion obtains an authority with others (more or fewer), such as
the opinion of an ignorant man will not possess. This is a real
difference between the graduated man and the non-graduated. But it
is a difference not contradicting the theory of Protagoras; who
did not affirm that every man's opinion was equally trustworthy in
the estimation of others, but that every man's opinion was alike a
measure to the man himself. The authority of the guide resides in
the belief and opinion of those who follow him, or who feel
prepared to follow him if necessity arises. A man gone astray on
his journey, asks the way to his destination from residents whom
he believes to know it, just as he might look at a compass, or at
the stars, if no other persons were near. In following their
direction, he is acting on his own belief, that he himself is
ignorant on the point in question and that they know. He is a
measure to himself, both of the extent of his own ignorance, and
of the extent of his own knowledge. And in this respect all are
alike--every man, woman, child, and animal;[68] though they are by
no means alike in the estimation of others, as trustworthy
authorities.
[Footnote 67: "Nam, quod dicunt omnino, se credere ei quem
judicent fuisse sapientem--probarem, si id ipsum rudes et indocti
judicare potuissent (statuere enim, qui sit sapiens, vel maximé
videtur esse sapientis). _Sed, ut potuerint, potuerunt, omnibus
rebus auditis, cognitis etiam reliquorum sententiis: judicaverunt
autem re semel auditâ, atque ad unius se auctoritatem
contulerunt._" (Cicero, Acad. Priora, ii. 3, 9.)]
[Footnote 68: Plato, Theætêt. p. 171 E. I transcribe the following
from the treatise of Fichte (Beruf des Menschen, Destination de
l'Homme; Traduction de Barchou de Penhoën, ch. i. Le Doute, pp.
54-55):--
"De la conscience de chaque individu, la nature se contemplant
sous un point de vue différent, il en résulte que je m'appelle
_moi_, et que tu t'appelles _toi_. Pour toi, je suis hors de toi;
et pour moi, tu es hors de moi. Dans ce qui est hors de moi, je me
saisis d'abord de ce qui m'avoisine le plus, de ce qui est le plus
à ma portée: toi, tu fais de même. Chacun de notre côté, nous
allons ensuite au delà. Puis, ayant commencé à cheminer ainsi dans
le monde de deux points de départ différens, nous suivons, pendant
le reste de notre vie, des routes qui se coupent çà et là, mais
qui jamais ne suivent exactement la même direction, jamais ne
courent parallèlement l'une à l'autre. Tous les individus
possibles peuvent être: par conséquent aussi, tous les points de
vue de conscience possibles. _La somme de ces consciences
individuelles fait la conscience universelle: il n'y a pas
d'autre._ Ce n'est en effet que dans l'individu que se trouve à la
fois et la limitation et la réalité. Dans l'individu la conscience
est entièrement déterminée par la nature intime de l'individu. Il
n'est donné à personne de savoir autre chose que ce qu'il sait. Il
ne pourrait pas davantage savoir les mêmes choses d'une autre
façon qu'il ne les sait."
The same doctrine is enforced with great originality and acuteness
in a recent work of M. Eugène Véron, Du Progrès Intellectuel dans
l'Humanité, Supériorité des Arts Modernes sur les Arts Anciens
(Paris, 1862, Guillaumin). M. Véron applies his general doctrine
mainly to the theory of Art and Æsthetics: moreover he affirms
more than I admit respecting human progress as a certain and
constant matter of fact. But he states clearly, as an universal
truth, the relative point of view--the necessary measurement for
itself, of each individual mind--and the consequent obligation, on
each, to allow to other minds the like liberty. We read, pp.
14-16-17:--
"Cela revient à dire que dans quelque cas que nous supposions,
nous ne pouvons sentir que dans la mesure de notre sensibilité,
comprendre et juger que dans la mesure de notre intelligence; et
que nos facultés étant en perpetuel developpement, les variations
de notre personnalité entrainent nécessairement celles de nos
jugemens, même quand nous n'en avons pas conscience. . . Chaque
homme a son esprit particulier. Ce que l'un comprend sans peine,
un autre ne le peut saisir; ce qui répugne à l'un, plait à
l'autre: ce qui ce me parait odieux, mon voisin l'approuve.
Quelque bonne envie que nous semblions avoir de nous perdre dans
la foule, de dépouiller notre individualité pour emprunter des
jugemens tout faits et des opinions taillées à la mesure et à
l'usage du public--il est facile de voir que, tout en ayant l'air
de répéter la leçon apprise, nous jugeons à notre manière, quand
nous jugeons: que notre jugement, tout en paraissant être celui de
tout le monde, n'en reste pas moins personnel, et n'est pas une
simple imitation: que cette ressemblance même est souvent plus
apparente que réelle: que l'identité extérieure des formules et
des expressions ne prouve pas absolument celle de la pensée. Rien
n'est élastique comme les mots, et comme les principes généraux
dans lesquels on pense enfermer les intelligences. C'est souvent
quand le langage est le plus semblable qu'on est le plus loin de
s'entendre.
"Du reste, quand même cette ressemblance serait aussi réelle
qu'elle est fausse, en quoi prouverait-il l'identité nécessaire
des intelligences? Qu'y aurait-il d'étonnant qu'au milieu de ce
communisme intellectual qui régit l'éducation de chaque classe, et
détermine nos habitudes intellectuelles et morales, les
distinctions natives disparussent ou s'atténuassent? Ne faut-il
pas plutôt admirer l'opiniâtre vitalité des différences
originelles qui résistent à tant de causes de nivellement?
L'identité primitive des intelligences n'est qu'une fiction
logique sans réalité--une simple abstraction de langage, _qui ne
repose que sur l'identité du mot avec lui-même_. Tout se reduit à
la possibilité abstraite des mêmes développemens, dans les mêmes
conditions d'hérédité et d'éducation--mais aussi de développemens
différens dans des circonstances différentes: c'est à dire, que
l'intelligence de chacun n'est identique à celle de tous, qu'au
moment où elle n'est pas encore proprement une intelligence."]
[Side-note: Plato's argument as to the distinction between present
sensation and anticipation of the future.]
A similar remark may be made as to Plato's distinction between the
different matters to which belief may apply: present sensation or
sentiment in one case--anticipation of future sensations or
sentiments, in another. Upon matters of present sensation and
sentiment (he argues), such as hot or cold, sweet or bitter, just
or unjust, honourable or base, &c., one man is as good a judge as
another: but upon matters involving future contingency, such as
what is healthy or unhealthy,--profitable and good, or hurtful and
bad,--most men judge badly: only a few persons, possessed of
special skill and knowledge, judge well, each in his respective
province.
[Side-note: The formula of Relativity does not imply that every man
believes himself to be infallible.]
I for my part admit this distinction to be real and important.
Most other persons admit the same.[69] In acting upon it, I follow
out my belief,--and so do they. This is a general fact, respecting
the circumstances which determine individual belief. Like all
other causes of belief, it operates relatively to the individual
mind, and thus falls under that general canon of relativity, which
it is the express purpose of the Protagorean formula to affirm.
Sokrates impugns the formula of relativity, as if it proclaimed
every one to believe himself more competent to predict the future
than any other person. But no such assumption is implied in it. To
say that a man is a measure to himself, is not to say that he is,
or, that he believes himself to be, omniscient or infallible. A
sick man may mistake the road towards future health, in many
different directions. One patient may over-estimate his own
knowledge,--that is one way, but only one among several: another
may be diffident, and may undervalue his own knowledge: a third
may over-estimate the knowledge of his professional adviser, and
thus follow an ignorant physician, believing him to be instructed
and competent: a fourth, instead of consulting a physician, may
consult a prophet, whom Plato[70] here reckons among the
authoritative infallible measures in respect to future events: a
fifth may (like the rhetor Ælius Aristeides[71]) disregard the
advice of physicians, and follow prescriptions enjoined to him in
his own dreams, believing them to be sent by Æsculapius the
Preserving God. Each of these persons judges differently about the
road to future health: but each is alike a measure to himself: the
belief of each is relative to his own mental condition and
predispositions. You, or I, may believe that one or other of them
is mistaken: but here another measure is introduced--_your_ mind
or _mine_.
[Footnote 69: Plato, Theætêt. p. 179 A. [Greek: pa=s a)\n
o(mologoi=].]
[Footnote 70: Plato, Theætêt. p. 179 A, where Mr. Campbell
observes in his note--"The [Greek: ma/ntis] is introduced as being
[Greek: e)pistê/môn] of the future generally; just as the
physician is of future health and disease, the musician of future
harmony," &c.]
[Footnote 71: See the five discourses of the rhetor
Aristeides--[Greek: I(erô=n Lo/goi], Oratt. xxiii.-xxvii.--containing
curious details about his habits and condition, and illustrating his
belief; especially Or. xxiii. p. 462 seqq. The perfect faith which
he reposed in his dreams, and the confidence with which he speaks
of the benefits derived from acting upon them, are remarkable.]
[Side-note: Plato's argument is untenable--That if the Protagorean
formula be admitted, dialectic discussion would be annulled--The
reverse is true--Dialectic recognises the autonomy of the
Individual mind.]
But the most unfounded among all Plato's objections to the
Protagorean formula, is that in which Sokrates is made to allege,
that if it be accepted, the work of dialectical discussion is at
an end: that the Sokratic Elenchus, the reciprocal scrutiny of
opinions between two dialogists, becomes nugatory--since every
man's opinions are _right_.[72] Instead of _right_, we must add
the requisite qualification, here as elsewhere, by reading, _right
to the man himself_. Now, dealing with Plato's affirmation thus
corrected, we must pronounce not only that it is not true, but
that the direct reverse of it is true. Dialectical discussion and
the Sokratic procedure, far from implying the negation of the
Protagorean formula, involve the unqualified recognition of it.
Without such recognition the procedure cannot even begin, much
less advance onward to any result. Dialectic operates altogether
by question and answer: the questioner takes all his premisses
from the answers of the respondent, and cannot proceed in any
direction except that in which the respondent leads him. Appeal is
always directly made to the affirmative or negative of the
individual mind, which is thus installed as measure of truth or
falsehood _for itself_. The peculiar and characteristic excellence
of the Sokratic Elenchus consists in thus stimulating the interior
mental activity of the individual hearer, in eliciting from him
all the positive elements of the debate, and in making him feel a
shock when one of his answers contradicts the others. Sokrates not
only does not profess to make himself a measure for the
respondent, but expressly disclaims doing so: he protests against
being considered as a teacher, and avows his own entire ignorance.
He undertakes only the obstetric process of evolving from the
respondent mind what already exists in it without the means of
escape--and of applying interrogatory tests to the answer when
produced: if there be nothing in the respondent's mind, his art is
inapplicable. He repudiates all appeal to authority, except that
of the respondent himself.[73] Accordingly there is neither sense
nor fitness in the Sokratic cross-examination, unless you assume
that each person, to whom it is addressed, is a measure of truth
and falsehood to himself. Implicitly indeed, this is assumed in
rhetoric as well as in dialectic: wherever the speaker aims at
persuading, he adapts his mode of speech to the predispositions of
the hearer's own mind; and he thus recognises that mind as a
measure for itself. But the Sokratic Dialectic embodies the same
recognition, and the same essential relativity to the hearer's
mind, more forcibly than any rhetoric. And the Platonic Sokrates
(in the Phædrus) makes it one of his objections against orators
who addressed multitudes, that they did not discriminate either
the specialties of different minds, or the specialties of
discourse applicable to each.[74]
[Footnote 72: Plato, Theætêt. p. 161 E.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 74: Plato, Phædrus, p. 271 D-E; compare 258 A.]
[Side-note: Contrast with the Treatise De Legibus--Plato assumes
infallible authority--sets aside Dialectic.]
Though Sokrates, and Plato so far forth as follower of Sokrates,
employed a colloquial method based on the fundamental assumption
of the Protagorean formula--autonomy of each individual
mind--whether they accepted the formula in terms, or not; yet we shall
find Plato at the end of his career, in his treatise De Legibus,
constructing an imaginary city upon the attempted deliberate
exclusion of this formula. We shall find him there monopolising
all teaching and culture of his citizens from infancy upwards,
barring out all freedom of speech or writing by a strict
censorship, and severely punishing dissent from the prescribed
orthodoxy. But then we shall also find that Plato in that last
stage of his life--when he constitutes himself as lawgiver, the
measure of truth or falsehood for all his citizens--has at the
same time discontinued his early commerce with the Sokratic
Dialectics.
[Side-note: Plato in denying the Protagorean formula, constitutes
himself the measure for all. Counter-proposition to the formula.]
On the whole then, looking at what Plato says about the
Protagorean doctrine of Relativity--_Homo Mensura_--first, his
statement what the doctrine really is, next his strictures upon
it--we may see that he ascribes to it consequences which it will
not fairly carry. He impugns it as if it excluded philosophy and
argumentative scrutiny: whereas, on the contrary, it is the only
basis upon which philosophy or "reasoned truth" can stand. Whoever
denies the Protagorean autonomy of the individual judgment, must
propound as his counter theory some heteronomy, such as he (the
denier) approves. If I am not allowed to judge of truth and
falsehood for myself, who is to judge for me? Plato, in the
Treatise De Legibus, answers very unequivocally:--assuming to
himself that infallibility which I have already characterised as
the prerogative of King Nomos: "I, the lawgiver, am the judge for
all my citizens: you must take my word for what is true or false:
you shall hear nothing except what my censors approve--and if,
nevertheless, any dissenters arise, there are stringent penalties
in store for them". Here is an explicit enunciation of the
Counter-Proposition,[75] necessary to be maintained by those who
deny the Protagorean doctrine. If you pronounce a man unfit to be
the measure of truth for himself, you constitute yourself the
measure, in his place: either directly as lawgiver--or by
nominating censors according to your own judgment. As soon as he
is declared a lunatic, some other person must be appointed to
manage his property for him. You can only exchange one individual
judgment for another. You cannot get out of the region of
individual judgments, more or fewer in number: the King, the Pope,
the Priest, the Judges or Censors, the author of some book, or the
promulgator of such and such doctrine. The infallible measure
which you undertake to provide, must be found in some person or
persons--if it can be found at all: in some person selected by
yourself--that is, in the last result, _yourself_.[76]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 76: Aristotle says (Ethic. Nikomach. x. 1176, a. 15)
[Greek: dokei= d' e)n a(/pasi toi=s toiou/tois _ei)=nai to\
phaino/menon tô=| spoudai/ô|_.] "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. [Greek: Ti/ e)/stin ai)/tion tou=
sugkatati/thesthai/ tini? To\ phai/nesthai o(/ti u(pa/rchei. Tô=|
ou)=n phainome/nô| o(/ti ou)ch u(pa/rchei, sugkatati/thesthai
ou)ch oi(=o/n te.]]
[Side-note: Import of the Protagorean formula is best seen when we
state explicitly the counter-proposition.]
It is only when the Counter-Proposition to the Protagorean formula
is explicitly brought out, that the full meaning of that formula
can be discerned. If you deny it, the basis of all free discussion
and scrutiny is withdrawn: philosophy, or what is properly called
reasoned truth, disappears. In itself it says little.
[Side-note: Unpopularity of the Protagorean formula--Most believers
insist upon making themselves a measure for others, as well as for
themselves. Appeal to Abstractions.]
Yet little as its positive import may seem to be, it clashes with
various illusions, omissions, and exigencies, incident to the
ordinary dogmatising process. It substitutes the concrete in place
of the abstract--the complete in place of the elliptical. Instead
of Truth and Falsehood, which present to us the Abstract and
impersonal as if it stood alone--the Objective divested of its
Subject--we are translated into the real world of beliefs and
disbeliefs, individual believers and disbelievers: matters
affirmed or denied by some Subject actual or supposable--by you,
by me, by him or them, perhaps by all persons within our
knowledge. All men agree in the subjective fact, or in the mental
states called belief and disbelief; but all men do not agree in
the matters believed and disbelieved, or in what they speak of as
Truth and Falsehood. No infallible objective mark, no common
measure, no canon of evidence, recognised by all, has yet been
found. What is Truth to one man, is not truth, and is often
Falsehood, to another: that which governs the mind as infallible
authority in one part of the globe, is treated with indifference
or contempt elsewhere.[77] Each man's belief, though in part
determined by the same causes as the belief of others, is in part
also determined by causes peculiar to himself. When a man speaks
of Truth, he means what he himself (along with others, or singly,
as the case may be) believes to be Truth; unless he expressly
superadds the indication of some other persons believing in it.
This is the reality of the case, which the Protagorean formula
brings into full view; but which most men dislike to recognise,
and disguise from themselves as well as from others in the common
elliptical forms of speech. In most instances a believer entirely
forgets that his own mind is the product of a given time and
place, and of a conjunction of circumstances always peculiar,
amidst the aggregate of mankind--for the most part narrow. He
cannot be content (like Protagoras) to be a measure for himself
and for those whom his arguments may satisfy. This would be to
proclaim what some German critics denounce as Subjectivism.[78] He
insists upon constituting himself--or some authority worshipped by
himself--or some abstraction interpreted by himself--a measure for
all others besides, whether assentient or dissentient. That which
_he_ believes, all ought to believe.
[Footnote 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."]
[Footnote 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".]
This state of mind in reference to belief is usual with most men,
not less at the present day than in the time of Plato and
Protagoras. It constitutes the natural intolerance prevalent among
mankind; which each man (speaking generally), in the case of his
own beliefs, commends and exults in, as a virtue. It flows as a
natural corollary from the sentiment of belief, though it may be
corrected by reflection and social sympathy. Hence the doctrine of
Protagoras--equal right of private judgment to each man for
himself--becomes inevitably unwelcome.
[Side-note: Aristotle failed in his attempts to refute the
Protagorean formula--Every reader of Aristotle will claim the
right of examining for himself Aristotle's canons of truth.]
We are told that Demokritus, as well as Plato and Aristotle, wrote
against Protagoras. The treatise of Demokritus is lost: but we
possess what the two latter said against the Protagorean formula.
In my judgment both failed in refuting it. Each of them professed
to lay down objective, infallible, criteria of truth and
falsehood: Democritus on his side, and the other dogmatical
philosophers, professed to do the same, each in his own way--and
each in a different way.[79] Now the Protagorean formula neither
allows nor disallows any one of these proposed objective criteria:
but it enunciates the appeal to which all of them must be
submitted--the subjective condition of satisfying the judgment of
each hearer. Its protest is entered only when that condition is
overleaped, and when the dogmatist enacts his canon of belief as
imperative, peremptory, binding upon all (allgemeingültig) both
assentient and dissentient. I am grateful to Aristotle for his
efforts to lay down objective canons in the research of truth; but
I claim the right of examining those canons for myself, and of
judging whether that, which satisfied Aristotle, satisfies me
also. The same right which I claim for myself, I am bound to allow
to all others. The general expression of this compromise is, the
Protagorean formula. No one demands more emphatically to be a
measure for himself, even when all authority is opposed to him,
than Sokrates in the Platonic Gorgias.[80]
[Footnote 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. [Greek: No/mô| gluku/,
no/mô| pikro/n, no/mô| thermo/n, no/mô| psuchro/n, no/mô| chroiê/;
e)te/ê| de\ a)/toma kai\ keno/n. A(/per nomi/zetai me\n ei)=nai
kai\ doxa/zetai ta\ ai)sthêta/, ou)k e)/sti de\ kata\ a)lêthei/an
tau=ta; a)lla\ ta\ a)/toma mo/non kai\ ke/non.]
Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathemat. vii. 135-139; Diog. Laert. ix. 72.
See Mullach, Democriti Fragm. pp. 204-208.
The discourse of Protagoras [Greek: Peri\ tou= o)/ntos], 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--[Greek: pro\s tou\s e(\n to\
o)\n ei)sa/gontas]. Allusion is probably made to the Platonic
dialogues Parmenides and Sophistes.]
[Footnote 80: Plato, Gorgias, p. 472.]
[Side-note: Plato's examination of the other doctrine--That
knowledge is Sensible Perception. He adverts to sensible facts
which are different with different Percipients.]
After thus criticising the formula--Homo Mensura--Plato proceeds
to canvass the other doctrine, which he ascribes to Protagoras
along with others, and which he puts into the mouth of
Theætêtus--"That knowledge is sensible perception". He connects that
doctrine with the above-mentioned formula, by illustrations which
exhibit great divergence between one percipient Subject and another.
He gives us, as examples of sensible perception, the case of the
wind, cold to one man, not cold to another: that of the wine,
sweet to a man in health, bitter if he be sickly.[81] Perhaps
Protagoras may have dwelt upon cases like these, as best
calculated to illustrate the relativity of all affirmations: for
though the judgments are in reality both equally relative, whether
two judges pronounce alike, or whether they pronounce differently,
under the same conditions--yet where they judge differently, each
stands forth in his own individuality, and the relativity of the
judgment is less likely to be disputed.
[Footnote 81: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 152 A, 159 C.]
[Side-note: Such is not the case with all the facts of sense. The
conditions of unanimity are best found among select facts of
sense--weighing, measuring, &c.]
But though some facts of sense are thus equivocal, generating
dissension rather than unanimity among different individuals--such
is by no means true of the facts of sense taken generally.[82] On
the contrary, it is only these facts--the world of reality,
experience, and particulars--which afford a groundwork and
assurance of unanimity in human belief, under all varieties of
teaching or locality. Counting, measuring, weighing, are facts of
sense simple and fundamental, and comparisons of those facts:
capable of being so exhibited that no two persons shall either see
them differently or mistrust them. Of two persons exposed to the
same wind, one may feel cold, and the other not: but both of them
will see the barometer or thermometer alike.[83] [Greek: Pa/nta
me/trô| kai\ a)rithmô=| kai\ stathmô=|]--would be the perfection
of science, if it could be obtained. Plato himself recognises, in
more than one place, the irresistible efficacy of weight and
measure in producing unanimity; and in forestalling those disputes
which are sure to arise where weight and measure cannot be
applied.[84] It is therefore among select facts of sense,
carefully observed and properly compared, that the groundwork of
unanimity is to be sought, so far as any rational and universal
groundwork for it is attainable. In other words, it is here that
we must seek for the basis of knowledge or cognition.
[Footnote 82: Aristotle (Metaphysic. [Greek: G]. p. 1010, a. 25
seq.) in arguing against Herakleitus and his followers, who dwelt
upon [Greek: ta\ ai)sthêta\] as ever fluctuating and undefinable,
urges against them that this is not true of _all_ [Greek:
ai)sthêta/], 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 [Greek:
ai)sthêta\] generally, you ought to predicate constancy and
unchangeability, not flux and variation, since the former
predicates are true of much the larger proportion of [Greek:
ai)sthêta/]. See the Scholia on the above passage of Aristotle's
Metaphysica, and also upon Book A. 991, a. 9.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Side-note: Arguments of Sokrates in examining this question.
Divergence between one man and another arises, not merely from
different sensual impressibility, but from mental and associative
difference.]