[69] Plato, Theætêt. p. 179 A. πᾶς ἂν ὁμολογοῖ.
[70] Plato, Theætêt. p. 179 A, where Mr. Campbell observes in his note — “The μάντις is introduced as being ἐπιστήμων of the future generally; just as the physician is of future health and disease, the musician of future harmony,” &c.
[71] See the five discourses of the rhetor Aristeides — Ἱερῶν Λόγοι, 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.
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]
[72] Plato, Theætêt. p. 161 E.
[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.