What appears to have struck Plato most strongly in considering the doctrine of Protagoras was this—that if everybody is right, or as right as any other, all reasoning, argument, persuasion, in fine, the whole science of dialectics, becomes ipso facto useless and absurd (p. 161, E.) There are no such characters as wise and foolish. Protagoras himself felt the difficulty, but evaded it thus: the wise man is not one who tries to argue a person out of his convictions, e.g., that justice is only tyranny, or that sweet is bitter, but who so trains and educates the mind or appetite that the sounder and better view will spontaneously present itself. Thus a good sophist or a wise legislator will endeavour so to educate and so to govern, that right and reasonable views will approve themselves to the people. Again, in judging of what will be good or useful in the end, sagacity is needed, which clearly is not the property of everyone alike. A thing is right or wrong only as individual conviction or the law of a State makes it so for the time being; but in advising a certain course of action, where result, and therefore, forethought are involved, one counsellor may be greatly superior to another (p. 172). Hence, as legislation is prospective, it is not true that one man's opinion as to the wisdom or expediency of a measure is as good as another's; but there are some things at least in which one man's must be better than another's judgment.
It was thus that Protagoras endeavoured to reconcile the obvious fact that some men were more clever than others, with the theory that all morality is based on mere human opinion. And those persons would take a very shallow view who think that all this is merely an ingenious quibbling. The difficulties which Protagoras attempted to solve are real ones, and only thinkers know to what extent all questions, both of religion and casuistry, are bound up with them.
We proceed to perform, somewhat in brief, the less agreeable task of showing that Mr. Jowett's version of the Theætetus, though always fluent and pleasant to read, is not always as accurate as might have been desired.
In p. 149, A., Socrates playfully asks Theætetus if he has never heard that he, Socrates, is the son of a midwife, by name, Phænaretè, μάλα γενναίας τε καὶ βλοσυρᾶς, 'a sour-faced old lady,' we should say. Mr. Jowett somewhat oddly renders this phrase, a 'midwife, brave and burly.' The epithets mean something very different. The first is an ironical allusion to the humble station of the professional midwife, the latter to the alarm which her presence might inspire in the timid.... For βλοσυρὸν is something that shocks and causes terror, as in Æschylus, Suppl. 813; Eumen. 161. To this real or supposed parentage of the philosopher, a joke is directed by Aristophanes in the Nubes, 137—
καὶ φροντίδ' ἐξήμβλωκας έξευρημένην.
Perhaps also the Φαιναρέτη in Acharn. 49, may have reference to this person. In p. 151, B., προσφέρου πρὸς ἐμὲ is not 'come to me,' but 'behave towards me,' 'deal with me.' And in p. 156, A., ἀντίτυποι ἄνθρωποι are not 'repulsive' mortals (at least, according to our established use of the word), but 'refractory,' 'men on whom one can make no impression,' but from whom a blow rebounds as a hammer does from an anvil. Antisthenes and the cynical party seem to be meant. In p. 156, D., we come to a very obscure passage. Mr. Jowett's version is, 'And the slower elements have their motions in the same place and about things near them, and thus beget; but the things begotten are quicker, for their motions are from place to place.' This is not very intelligible. For ἡ κίνησις, it seems to us that we should read ἡ γένεσις. The figure of speech is taken from the notion of sexual contact, and by πρὸς τὰ πλησιάζοντα τὴν κίνησιν ἴσχει, Socrates seems to mean that certain impressions or objects meet certain senses, e.g., sounds the ear, scents the nose, objects the eye, but severally 'have their rate of motion according to the speed of those faculties with which they naturally unite;' but, he adds, the sensations of hearing, smelling, seeing are more instantaneously perceived, when once produced, because the γένεσις or production of such sensation takes place ἐν φορᾷ, while the αἴσθησις and the αἰσθητὸν are moving in space towards each other, and thus, as it were, the offspring partakes of the speed of the parents. In plain words, sight and sound and smell are produced at very different intervals of time, but are equally sudden sensations when produced; and even those which are more slowly generated are as quickly felt. (Compare Aristot., Eth. x. ch. iii. s. 4. πάσῃ (κινήσει) γὰρ οἰκεῖον εἶναι δοκεῖ τὰχος καὶ βραδυτής .) In p. 159, D., ἡ γλυκύτης πρὸς τοῦ οἴνου περὶ αὐτὸν φερομένη seems to us to mean, the sense of sweetness from the wine moving to and coming upon the patient,' τὸν πάσχοντα (unless, indeed, we should read περὶ αὐτὴν, i.e., γλῶσσαν, which would render the meaning rather clearer). Mr. Jowett's version is, 'the quality of sweetness which arises out of, and is moving about the wine.' Just below, περὶ δὲ τὸν οἶνον γιγνομένην καὶ φερομένην πικρότητα, the words καὶ φερομένην read very like an interpolation, as an attentive consideration of the passage, we think, will show.
In p. 161, A., we come upon some rather loose rendering. Theætetus asks Socrates whether he has not been all along speaking in irony, and whether, having proved that black is white, he is not prepared equally to prove that white is black. This, of course, is a playful satire on his skill in dialectics. The words ἀλλὰ πρὸς θεῶν εἰπὲ, ἦ αὖ οὐχ οὕτως ἔχει, literally mean, 'But tell me in heaven's name, is not all this, on the other hand, not so?' And so just below, Socrates says, 'You are, indeed, a lover of arguments and a worthy good soul, my Theodorus, for thinking that I am a mere bag of words, and can easily bring them out when wanted, and prove that, on the other hand, these things are not so.' In the very next words, τὸ δὲ γιγνόμενον οὐκ ἐννοεῖς, there is a joke, and not a bad one, on the doctrine, οὐδὲν ἔστιν ἀλλὰ πάντα γίγνεται. Mr. Jowett's version of the whole passage seems rather careless: 'But I should like to know, Socrates, by heaven I should, whether you mean to say that all this is untrue? Socrates: You are fond of argument, Theodorus, and now you innocently fancy that I am a bag full of arguments, and can easily pull one out which will prove the reverse of all this. But you do not see that in reality none of these arguments come from me. They all come from him who talks with me. I only know just enough to extract them from the wisdom of another, and to receive them in a spirit of fairness.' The last words, ἀποδέξασθαι μετρίως, more accurately mean, 'to take it from its parent fairly well,' i.e., as a theme for discussion. The phrase μητρόθεν δέχεσθαι, said of the nurse taking a newly-born infant, is playfully alluded to.
In p. 161, c., Mr. Jowett's version but poorly represents the real sense of a keenly ironical passage:—'Then, when we were reverencing him as a god, he might have condescended to inform us that he was no wiser than a tadpole, and did not even aspire to be a man: would not this have produced an overpowering effect?' The exact words of Plato are these: 'In which case he would have commenced his address to us in grand style, and very contemptuously, by letting us see that we have been looking up to him, as to a god, for his wisdom, while he all the time was in no degree superior, in respect of intelligence, to a tadpole, not to say to any other man.' The point is, that if Protagoras had commenced his work entitled 'Truth,' with the proposition, 'A pig is the measure of all things' (i.e., the standard by which feelings and notions are to be tested), 'he would have well shown his contempt of men who foolishly took him for an authority.' Of course the very object and heart's desire of Protagoras in writing such a book was to be thought supremely clever. Hence the irony is apparent.
Again, in p. 160, B., Socrates says to Theodorus:—
'You have capitally expressed my weakness by your simile (τὴν νόσον μου ἀπείκασας). I, however, am stouter (ἰσχυρικώτερος) than they; for before now many and many a Hercules and Theseus' (meaning, of course, many Sophists), 'on meeting me, men brave at talk, have pounded me right well; but I don't give it up for all that, so strong a passion has taken possession of my soul for this kind of exercise. Therefore, do not refuse on your part to prepare for a contest with me, and so to benefit yourself and me alike.'