Again, the method pursued by Protagoras, is one suitable to a teacher who has jumped over this first step; who assumes virtue, as something fixed in the public sentiments — and addresses himself to those sentiments, ready-made as he finds them. He expands and illustrates them in continuous lectures of some length, which fill both the ears and minds of the listener — “Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna”: he describes their growth, propagation, and working in the community: he gives interesting comments on the poets, eulogising the admired heroes who form the theme of their verses, and enlarging on their admonitions. Moreover, while resting altogether upon the authority of King Nomos, he points out the best jewel in the crown of that potentate; the great social fact of punishment prospective, rationally apportioned, and employed altogether for preventing and deterring — instead of being a mere retrospective impulse, vindictive or retributive for the past. He describes instructively the machinery operative in the community for ensuring obedience to what they think right: he teaches, in his eloquent expositions and interpretations, the same morality, public and private, that every one else teaches: while he can perform the work of teaching, somewhat more effectively than they. Lastly, his method is essentially showy and popular; intended for numerous assemblies, reproducing the established creeds and sentiments of those assemblies, to their satisfaction and admiration. He is prepared to be met and answered in his own way, by opposing speakers; and he conceives himself more than a match for such rivals. He professes also to possess the art of short conversation or discussion. But in the exercise of this art, he runs almost involuntarily into his more characteristic endowment of continuous speech: besides that the points which he raises for discussion assume all the fundamental principles, and turn only upon such applications of those principles as are admitted by most persons to be open questions, not foreclosed by a peremptory orthodoxy.
Method of Sokrates. Dwells upon that part of the problem which Protagoras had left out.
Upon all these points, Sokrates is the formal antithesis of Protagoras. He disclaims altogether the capacities to which that Sophist lays claim. Not only he cannot teach virtue, but he professes not to know what it is, nor whether it be teachable at all, He starts from a different point of view: not considering virtue as a known datum, or as an universal postulate, but assimilating it to a special craft or accomplishment, in which a few practitioners suffice for the entire public: requiring that in this capacity it shall be defined, and its practitioners and teachers pointed out. He has no common ground with Protagoras; for the difficulties which he moots are just such as the common consciousness (and Protagoras along with it) overleaps or supposes to be settled. His first requirement, advanced under the modest guise of a small doubt[136] which Protagoras must certainly be competent to remove, is, to know — What virtue is? What are the separate parts of virtue — justice, moderation, holiness, &c.? What is the relation which they bear to each other and to the whole — virtue? Are they homogeneous, differing only in quantity or has each of them its own specific essence and peculiarity?[137] Respecting virtue as a whole, we must recollect, Protagoras had discoursed eloquently and confidently, as of a matter perfectly known. He is now called back as it were to meet an attack in the rear: to answer questions which he had never considered, and which had never even presented themselves to him as questions. At first he replies as if the questions offered no difficulty;[138] sometimes he does not feel their importance, so that it seems to him a matter of indifference whether he replies in the affirmative or negative.[139] But he finds himself brought round, by a series of questions, to assent to conclusions which he nevertheless thinks untrue, and which are certainly unwelcome. Accordingly, he becomes more and more disgusted with the process of analytical interrogation: and at length answers with such impatience and prolixity, that the interrogation can no longer be prosecuted. Here comes in the break — the remonstrance of Sokrates — and the mediation of the by-standers.
[136] Plato, Protag. p. 328 E. πλὴν σμικρόν τί μοι ἐμποδών, ὅ δῆλον ὅτι Πρωταγόρας ῥᾳδίως ἐπεκδιδάξει, &c.
[137] Respecting Ariston of Chios, Diogenes Laertius tells us — Ἀρετὰς δ’ οὔτε πολλὰς εἰσῆγεν, ὡς ὁ Ζήνων, οὔτε μίαν πολλοῖς ὀνόμασιν καλουμένην — ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ πρὸς τί πως ἔχειν (Diog. Laert. vii. 161).
[138] Plato, Protag. p. 329 D. Ἀλλὰ ῥᾴδιον τοῦτό γ’, ἔφη, ἀποκρίνασθαι, &c.
[139] Plato, Protag. p. 321 D. εἰ γὰρ βούλει, ἔστω ἡμῖν καὶ δικαιοσύνη ὅσιον καὶ ὁσιότης δίκαιον. Μή μοι, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ· οὐδὲν γὰρ δέομαι τὸ “εἰ βούλει” τοῦτο καὶ “εἰ σοι δοκεῖ” ἐλέγχεσθαι, ἀλλ’ ἐμέ τε καὶ σέ.
Antithesis between the eloquent lecturer and the analytical cross-examiner.
It is this antithesis between the eloquent popular lecturer, and the analytical enquirer and cross-examiner, which the dialogue seems mainly intended to set forth. Protagoras professes to know that which he neither knows, nor has ever tried to probe to the bottom. Upon this false persuasion of knowledge, the Sokratic Elenchus is brought to bear. We are made to see how strange, repugnant, and perplexing, is the process of analysis to this eloquent expositor: how incompetent he is to go through it without confusion: how little he can define his own terms, or determine the limits of those notions on which he is perpetually descanting.
Protagoras not intended to be always in the wrong, though he is described as brought to a contradiction.