Theaetetus
is knowing, he may remember and not know. Is not this a "reductio ad
absurdum" of the hypothesis that knowledge is sensible perception? Yet
perhaps we are crowing too soon; and if Protagoras, "the father of the
myth," had been alive, the result might have been very different. But he
is dead, and Theodorus, whom he left guardian of his "orphan," has not
been very zealous in defending him.'
Theodorus objects that Callias is the true guardian, but he hopes that
Socrates will come to the rescue. Socrates prefaces his defence by
resuming the attack. He asks whether a man can know and not know at the
same time? 'Impossible.' Quite possible, if you maintain that seeing is
knowing. The confident adversary, suiting the action to the word, shuts
one of your eyes; and now, says he, you see and do not see, but do
you know and not know? And a fresh opponent darts from his ambush, and
transfers to knowledge the terms which are commonly applied to sight.
He asks whether you can know near and not at a distance; whether you can
have a sharp and also a dull knowledge. While you are wondering at his
incomparable wisdom, he gets you into his power, and you will not escape
until you have come to an understanding with him about the money which
is to be paid for your release.
But Protagoras has not yet made his defence; and already he may be heard
contemptuously replying that he is not responsible for the admissions
which were made by a boy, who could not foresee the coming move, and
therefore had answered in a manner which enabled Socrates to raise a
laugh against himself. 'But I cannot be fairly charged,' he will say,
'with an answer which I should not have given; for I never maintained
that the memory of a feeling is the same as a feeling, or denied that a
man might know and not know the same thing at the same time. Or, if you
will have extreme precision, I say that man in different relations is
many or rather infinite in number. And I challenge you, either to show
that his perceptions are not individual, or that if they are, what
appears to him is not what is. As to your pigs and baboons, you are
yourself a pig, and you make my writings a sport of other swine. But
I still affirm that man is the measure of all things, although I admit
that one man may be a thousand times better than another, in proportion
as he has better impressions. Neither do I deny the existence of wisdom
or of the wise man. But I maintain that wisdom is a practical remedial
power of turning evil into good, the bitterness of disease into the
sweetness of health, and does not consist in any greater truth or
superior knowledge. For the impressions of the sick are as true as the
impressions of the healthy; and the sick are as wise as the healthy. Nor
can any man be cured of a false opinion, for there is no such thing;
but he may be cured of the evil habit which generates in him an evil
opinion. This is effected in the body by the drugs of the physician, and
in the soul by the words of the Sophist; and the new state or opinion
is not truer, but only better than the old. And philosophers are not
tadpoles, but physicians and husbandmen, who till the soil and infuse
health into animals and plants, and make the good take the place of the
evil, both in individuals and states. Wise and good rhetoricians make
the good to appear just in states (for that is just which appears just
to a state), and in return, they deserve to be well paid. And you,
Socrates, whether you please or not, must continue to be a measure.
This is my defence, and I must request you to meet me fairly. We are
professing to reason, and not merely to dispute; and there is a great
difference between reasoning and disputation. For the disputer is always
seeking to trip up his opponent; and this is a mode of argument which
disgusts men with philosophy as they grow older. But the reasoner is
trying to understand him and to point out his errors to him, whether
arising from his own or from his companion's fault; he does not argue
from the customary use of names, which the vulgar pervert in all manner
of ways. If you are gentle to an adversary he will follow and love you;
and if defeated he will lay the blame on himself, and seek to escape
from his own prejudices into philosophy. I would recommend you,
Socrates, to adopt this humaner method, and to avoid captious and verbal
criticisms.'
Such, Theodorus, is the very slight help which I am able to afford to
your friend; had he been alive, he would have helped himself in far
better style.
'You have made a most valorous defence.'
Yes; but did you observe that Protagoras bade me be serious, and
complained of our getting up a laugh against him with the aid of a boy?
He meant to intimate that you must take the place of Theaetetus, who may
be wiser than many bearded men, but not wiser than you, Theodorus.
'The rule of the Spartan Palaestra is, Strip or depart; but you are like
the giant Antaeus, and will not let me depart unless I try a fall with
you.'
Yes, that is the nature of my complaint. And many a Hercules, many a
Theseus mighty in deeds and words has broken my head; but I am always at
this rough game. Please, then, to favour me.
'On the condition of not exceeding a single fall, I consent.'
Socrates now resumes the argument. As he is very desirous of doing
justice to Protagoras, he insists on citing his own words,--'What
appears to each man is to him.' And how, asks Socrates, are these words
reconcileable with the fact that all mankind are agreed in thinking
themselves wiser than others in some respects, and inferior to them in
others? In the hour of danger they are ready to fall down and worship
any one who is their superior in wisdom as if he were a god. And the
world is full of men who are asking to be taught and willing to be
ruled, and of other men who are willing to rule and teach them. All
which implies that men do judge of one another's impressions, and think
some wise and others foolish. How will Protagoras answer this argument?
For he cannot say that no one deems another ignorant or mistaken. If you
form a judgment, thousands and tens of thousands are ready to maintain
the opposite. The multitude may not and do not agree in Protagoras'
own thesis that 'Man is the measure of all things;' and then who is to
decide? Upon his own showing must not his 'truth' depend on the number
of suffrages, and be more or less true in proportion as he has more or
fewer of them? And he must acknowledge further, that they speak truly
who deny him to speak truly, which is a famous jest. And if he admits
that they speak truly who deny him to speak truly, he must admit that
he himself does not speak truly. But his opponents will refuse to admit
this of themselves, and he must allow that they are right in their
refusal. The conclusion is, that all mankind, including Protagoras
himself, will deny that he speaks truly; and his truth will be true
neither to himself nor to anybody else.
Theodorus is inclined to think that this is going too far. Socrates
ironically replies, that he is not going beyond the truth. But if the
old Protagoras could only pop his head out of the world below, he would
doubtless give them both a sound castigation and be off to the shades
in an instant. Seeing that he is not within call, we must examine the
question for ourselves. It is clear that there are great differences in
the understandings of men. Admitting, with Protagoras, that immediate
sensations of hot, cold, and the like, are to each one such as they
appear, yet this hypothesis cannot be extended to judgments or opinions.
And even if we were to admit further,--and this is the view of some who
are not thorough-going followers of Protagoras,--that right and wrong,
holy and unholy, are to each state or individual such as they appear,
still Protagoras will not venture to maintain that every man is equally
the measure of expediency, or that the thing which seems is expedient
to every one. But this begins a new question. 'Well, Socrates, we have
plenty of leisure. Yes, we have, and, after the manner of philosophers,
we are digressing; I have often observed how ridiculous this habit of
theirs makes them when they appear in court. 'What do you mean?' I mean
to say that a philosopher is a gentleman, but a lawyer is a servant.
The one can have his talk out, and wander at will from one subject
to another, as the fancy takes him; like ourselves, he may be long or
short, as he pleases. But the lawyer is always in a hurry; there is the
clepsydra limiting his time, and the brief limiting his topics, and his
adversary is standing over him and exacting his rights. He is a servant
disputing about a fellow-servant before his master, who holds the cause
in his hands; the path never diverges, and often the race is for his
life. Such experiences render him keen and shrewd; he learns the arts of
flattery, and is perfect in the practice of crooked ways; dangers have
come upon him too soon, when the tenderness of youth was unable to meet
them with truth and honesty, and he has resorted to counter-acts of
dishonesty and falsehood, and become warped and distorted; without any
health or freedom or sincerity in him he has grown up to manhood, and is
or esteems himself to be a master of cunning. Such are the lawyers; will
you have the companion picture of philosophers? or will this be too much
of a digression?
'Nay, Socrates, the argument is our servant, and not our master. Who is
the judge or where is the spectator, having a right to control us?'
I will describe the leaders, then: for the inferior sort are not worth
the trouble. The lords of philosophy have not learned the way to the
dicastery or ecclesia; they neither see nor hear the laws and votes of
the state, written or recited; societies, whether political or festive,
clubs, and singing maidens do not enter even into their dreams. And the
scandals of persons or their ancestors, male and female, they know no
more than they can tell the number of pints in the ocean. Neither
are they conscious of their own ignorance; for they do not practise
singularity in order to gain reputation, but the truth is, that the
outer form of them only is residing in the city; the inner man, as
Pindar says, is going on a voyage of discovery, measuring as with line
and rule the things which are under and in the earth, interrogating the
whole of nature, only not condescending to notice what is near them.
'What do you mean, Socrates?'
I will illustrate my meaning by the jest of the witty maid-servant, who
saw Thales tumbling into a well, and said of him, that he was so eager
to know what was going on in heaven, that he could not see what was
before his feet. This is applicable to all philosophers. The philosopher
is unacquainted with the world; he hardly knows whether his neighbour is
a man or an animal. For he is always searching into the essence of man,
and enquiring what such a nature ought to do or suffer different from
any other. Hence, on every occasion in private life and public, as I was
saying, when he appears in a law-court or anywhere, he is the joke, not
only of maid-servants, but of the general herd, falling into wells
and every sort of disaster; he looks such an awkward, inexperienced
creature, unable to say anything personal, when he is abused, in answer
to his adversaries (for he knows no evil of any one); and when he hears
the praises of others, he cannot help laughing from the bottom of
his soul at their pretensions; and this also gives him a ridiculous
appearance. A king or tyrant appears to him to be a kind of swine-herd
or cow-herd, milking away at an animal who is much more troublesome and
dangerous than cows or sheep; like the cow-herd, he has no time to be
educated, and the pen in which he keeps his flock in the mountains is