Theaetetus
disordered sensations of plants, and infuse into them good and healthy
sensations--aye and true ones; and the wise and good rhetoricians
make the good instead of the evil to seem just to states; for whatever
appears to a state to be just and fair, so long as it is regarded as
such, is just and fair to it; but the teacher of wisdom causes the good
to take the place of the evil, both in appearance and in reality. And in
like manner the Sophist who is able to train his pupils in this spirit
is a wise man, and deserves to be well paid by them. And so one man is
wiser than another; and no one thinks falsely, and you, whether you will
or not, must endure to be a measure. On these foundations the argument
stands firm, which you, Socrates, may, if you please, overthrow by an
opposite argument, or if you like you may put questions to me--a method
to which no intelligent person will object, quite the reverse. But I
must beg you to put fair questions: for there is great inconsistency
in saying that you have a zeal for virtue, and then always behaving
unfairly in argument. The unfairness of which I complain is that you do
not distinguish between mere disputation and dialectic: the disputer
may trip up his opponent as often as he likes, and make fun; but the
dialectician will be in earnest, and only correct his adversary when
necessary, telling him the errors into which he has fallen through his
own fault, or that of the company which he has previously kept. If
you do so, your adversary will lay the blame of his own confusion and
perplexity on himself, and not on you. He will follow and love you, and
will hate himself, and escape from himself into philosophy, in order
that he may become different from what he was. But the other mode of
arguing, which is practised by the many, will have just the opposite
effect upon him; and as he grows older, instead of turning philosopher,
he will come to hate philosophy. I would recommend you, therefore, as
I said before, not to encourage yourself in this polemical and
controversial temper, but to find out, in a friendly and congenial
spirit, what we really mean when we say that all things are in motion,
and that to every individual and state what appears, is. In this manner
you will consider whether knowledge and sensation are the same or
different, but you will not argue, as you were just now doing, from the
customary use of names and words, which the vulgar pervert in all sorts
of ways, causing infinite perplexity to one another. Such, Theodorus, is
the very slight help which I am able to offer to your old friend; had he
been living, he would have helped himself in a far more gloriose style.
THEODORUS: You are jesting, Socrates; indeed, your defence of him has
been most valorous.
SOCRATES: Thank you, friend; and I hope that you observed Protagoras
bidding us be serious, as the text, 'Man is the measure of all things,'
was a solemn one; and he reproached us with making a boy the medium of
discourse, and said that the boy's timidity was made to tell against his
argument; he also declared that we made a joke of him.
THEODORUS: How could I fail to observe all that, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Well, and shall we do as he says?
THEODORUS: By all means.
SOCRATES: But if his wishes are to be regarded, you and I must take up
the argument, and in all seriousness, and ask and answer one another,
for you see that the rest of us are nothing but boys. In no other way
can we escape the imputation, that in our fresh analysis of his thesis
we are making fun with boys.
THEODORUS: Well, but is not Theaetetus better able to follow a
philosophical enquiry than a great many men who have long beards?
SOCRATES: Yes, Theodorus, but not better than you; and therefore please
not to imagine that I am to defend by every means in my power your
departed friend; and that you are to defend nothing and nobody. At any
rate, my good man, do not sheer off until we know whether you are a
true measure of diagrams, or whether all men are equally measures and
sufficient for themselves in astronomy and geometry, and the other
branches of knowledge in which you are supposed to excel them.
THEODORUS: He who is sitting by you, Socrates, will not easily avoid
being drawn into an argument; and when I said just now that you would
excuse me, and not, like the Lacedaemonians, compel me to strip and
fight, I was talking nonsense--I should rather compare you to Scirrhon,
who threw travellers from the rocks; for the Lacedaemonian rule is
'strip or depart,' but you seem to go about your work more after the
fashion of Antaeus: you will not allow any one who approaches you to
depart until you have stripped him, and he has been compelled to try a
fall with you in argument.
SOCRATES: There, Theodorus, you have hit off precisely the nature of my
complaint; but I am even more pugnacious than the giants of old, for I
have met with no end of heroes; many a Heracles, many a Theseus, mighty
in words, has broken my head; nevertheless I am always at this rough
exercise, which inspires me like a passion. Please, then, to try a fall
with me, whereby you will do yourself good as well as me.
THEODORUS: I consent; lead me whither you will, for I know that you are
like destiny; no man can escape from any argument which you may weave
for him. But I am not disposed to go further than you suggest.
SOCRATES: Once will be enough; and now take particular care that we
do not again unwittingly expose ourselves to the reproach of talking
childishly.
THEODORUS: I will do my best to avoid that error.
SOCRATES: In the first place, let us return to our old objection, and
see whether we were right in blaming and taking offence at Protagoras
on the ground that he assumed all to be equal and sufficient in wisdom;
although he admitted that there was a better and worse, and that in
respect of this, some who as he said were the wise excelled others.
THEODORUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: Had Protagoras been living and answered for himself, instead
of our answering for him, there would have been no need of our reviewing
or reinforcing the argument. But as he is not here, and some one may
accuse us of speaking without authority on his behalf, had we not better
come to a clearer agreement about his meaning, for a great deal may be
at stake?
THEODORUS: True.
SOCRATES: Then let us obtain, not through any third person, but from his
own statement and in the fewest words possible, the basis of agreement.
THEODORUS: In what way?
SOCRATES: In this way:--His words are, 'What seems to a man, is to him.'
THEODORUS: Yes, so he says.
SOCRATES: And are not we, Protagoras, uttering the opinion of man, or
rather of all mankind, when we say that every one thinks himself wiser
than other men in some things, and their inferior in others? In the
hour of danger, when they are in perils of war, or of the sea, or of
sickness, do they not look up to their commanders as if they were
gods, and expect salvation from them, only because they excel them in
knowledge? Is not the world full of men in their several employments,
who are looking for teachers and rulers of themselves and of the
animals? and there are plenty who think that they are able to teach
and able to rule. Now, in all this is implied that ignorance and wisdom
exist among them, at least in their own opinion.
THEODORUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And wisdom is assumed by them to be true thought, and
ignorance to be false opinion.
THEODORUS: Exactly.
SOCRATES: How then, Protagoras, would you have us treat the argument?
Shall we say that the opinions of men are always true, or sometimes true
and sometimes false? In either case, the result is the same, and their
opinions are not always true, but sometimes true and sometimes false.
For tell me, Theodorus, do you suppose that you yourself, or any other
follower of Protagoras, would contend that no one deems another ignorant
or mistaken in his opinion?
THEODORUS: The thing is incredible, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And yet that absurdity is necessarily involved in the thesis
which declares man to be the measure of all things.
THEODORUS: How so?
SOCRATES: Why, suppose that you determine in your own mind something to
be true, and declare your opinion to me; let us assume, as he argues,
that this is true to you. Now, if so, you must either say that the rest
of us are not the judges of this opinion or judgment of yours, or that
we judge you always to have a true opinion? But are there not thousands
upon thousands who, whenever you form a judgment, take up arms against
you and are of an opposite judgment and opinion, deeming that you judge
falsely?
THEODORUS: Yes, indeed, Socrates, thousands and tens of thousands, as
Homer says, who give me a world of trouble.
SOCRATES: Well, but are we to assert that what you think is true to you
and false to the ten thousand others?
THEODORUS: No other inference seems to be possible.
SOCRATES: And how about Protagoras himself? If neither he nor the
multitude thought, as indeed they do not think, that man is the measure
of all things, must it not follow that the truth of which Protagoras
wrote would be true to no one? But if you suppose that he himself
thought this, and that the multitude does not agree with him, you must
begin by allowing that in whatever proportion the many are more than
one, in that proportion his truth is more untrue than true.
THEODORUS: That would follow if the truth is supposed to vary with
individual opinion.
SOCRATES: And the best of the joke is, that he acknowledges the truth
of their opinion who believe his own opinion to be false; for he admits
that the opinions of all men are true.
THEODORUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And does he not allow that his own opinion is false, if he
admits that the opinion of those who think him false is true?
THEODORUS: Of course.
SOCRATES: Whereas the other side do not admit that they speak falsely?
THEODORUS: They do not.
SOCRATES: And he, as may be inferred from his writings, agrees that this
opinion is also true.
THEODORUS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: Then all mankind, beginning with Protagoras, will contend,
or rather, I should say that he will allow, when he concedes that his
adversary has a true opinion--Protagoras, I say, will himself allow that
neither a dog nor any ordinary man is the measure of anything which he
has not learned--am I not right?
THEODORUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the truth of Protagoras being doubted by all, will be true
neither to himself to any one else?
THEODORUS: I think, Socrates, that we are running my old friend too
hard.
SOCRATES: But I do not know that we are going beyond the truth.
Doubtless, as he is older, he may be expected to be wiser than we are.
And if he could only just get his head out of the world below, he would
have overthrown both of us again and again, me for talking nonsense and
you for assenting to me, and have been off and underground in a trice.
But as he is not within call, we must make the best use of our own
faculties, such as they are, and speak out what appears to us to be
true. And one thing which no one will deny is, that there are great
differences in the understandings of men.
THEODORUS: In that opinion I quite agree.
SOCRATES: And is there not most likely to be firm ground in the
distinction which we were indicating on behalf of Protagoras, viz. that
most things, and all immediate sensations, such as hot, dry, sweet,
are only such as they appear; if however difference of opinion is to be
allowed at all, surely we must allow it in respect of health or disease?
for every woman, child, or living creature has not such a knowledge of
what conduces to health as to enable them to cure themselves.
THEODORUS: I quite agree.