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]
[40] Plato, Theætêt. p. 159.
[41] Plato, Theætêt. p. 160 A.
[42] Plato, Theætêt. p. 160 B. ἔπειπερ ἡμῶν ἡ ἀνάγκη τὴν οὐσίαν συνδεῖ μέν, συνδεῖ δε οὐδενὶ τῶν ἄλλων, οὐδ’ αὖ ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς· ἀλλήλοις δὴ λείπεται συνδεδέσθαι (i. e. τὸν αἰσθανόμενον and τὸ ποιοῦν αἰσθάνεσθαι). Ὤστε εἴτε τις εἶναι τί ὀνομάζει, τινὶ εἶναι, ἢ τινός, ἢ πρός τι, ῥητέον αὐτῷ, εἴτε γίγνεσθαι· αὐτὸ δὲ ἐφ’ αὑτοῦ τι ἢ ὂν ἢ γιγνόμενον οὔτε αὐτῷ λεκτέον, οὔτ’ ἄλλου λέγοντος ἀποδεκτέον.
Compare Aristot. Metaphys. Γ. 6, p. 1011, a. 23.
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.
[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 φυσιόλογοι 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 (ἡ δὲ τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ ἐνέργεια καὶ τῆς αἰσθήσεως ἡ αὐτὴ μέν ἐστι καὶ μία, τὸ δ’ εἶναι οὐ ταὐτὸν αὐταῖς). But this is not true when we speak of them potentially — διχῶς γὰρ λεγομένης τῆς αἰσθήσεως καὶ τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ, τῶν μὲν κατὰ δύναμιν τῶν δὲ κατ’ ἐνέργειαν, ἐπί τούτων μὲν συμβαίνει τὸ λεχθέν, ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ἑτέρων οὐ συμβαίνει. Ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνοι ἁπλῶς ἔλεγον περὶ τῶν λεγομένων οὐχ ἁπλῶς.
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.