Plato or Protagoras? Being a critical examination of the Protagoras speech in the Theætetus with some remarks upon error

B

386

S3

MAIN

PLATO OR PROTAGORAS ?

PLATO OK PROTAGORAS ?

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

RIDDLES OF THE SPHINX. A Study in
the Philosophy of Evolution. London: SWAN
SONNENSCHEIN & Co. 1891. Pp. xxvii, 468. Price
10s. 6d.

AXIOMS AS POSTULATES in PERSONAL
IDEALISM. Edited by HENRY STURT.
London: MACMILLAN & Co. 1902. Pp. 87.
Price 10s. net.

HUMANISM: Philosophical Essays. London:
MACMILLAN & Co. 1903. Pp. xxvii, 297. Price
8s. 6d. net.

STUDIES IN HUMANISM. London: MAC-
MILLAN & Co. 1907. Pp. xvii, 492. Price
10s. net.

PLATO OR PROTAGORAS ?

BEING A CRITICAL EXAMINATION

OP THE

PROTAGOEAS SPEECH IN THE THEAETETUS

WITH SOME REMARKS

UPON ERROR

BY

R C. S. SCHILLER, M.A., D.Sc.

FELLOW AND SENIOR TUTOR OF CORPUS CHRIST! COLLEGE, OXFORD

OXFORD
B. H. BLACKWELL, 50-51 BKOAD STREET

LONDON

SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO.
1908

All Rights Reserved
PRICE ONE SHILLING NET

' .

6

PREFACE.

IN a somewhat shorter form this Essay was read to
the Oxford Philological Society on the 15th Novem-
ber, 1907, and there had the benefit of valuable
criticisms from Mr. H. P. Richards, Mr. R. R. Marett
and others. I have in consequence been enabled to
realize more clearly the divergences from the current
theories as to the import of the Thecetetm to which
my own studies had conducted me. They proved to
be more extensive than I had suspected, and to
involve some interesting and novel issues both of a
literary and of a philosophic character. It seemed a
duty, therefore, to render my conclusions accessible
to the learned world, to which the problems of
Platonic criticism are of perennial interest. But
though my primary purpose is to raise a literary
question, I have-not thought it either right or pos-
sible to slur over the philosophic importance of my
thesis. For the philosophical significance of the
Thecetetus has been very strangely misconstrued. It
contains no tenable account of knowledge. It con-
tains no refutation of Humanism. It refutes nothing
but an extreme, and probably exaggerated or mis-
apprehended, form of sensationalism. Nothing of all
this has, apparently, been perceived. Nor, again,
has what it does contain been fully recognized. It

718992

:a£;j 6

:a, swiping repudiation of the senses and
the feelings as contributories to the growth of know-
ledge. It contains a renunciation by Platonic logic
of the duty of explaining the individual. It is a
glorious monument of the Weltflucht to which Pure
Thought finds itself impelled whenever it is taken
seriously. And its very patient and subtle researches
into the problem of knowledge culminate in the
frankest and sublimest confession of failure which
adorns the annals of intellectualistic literature.
Whether or not, therefore, it is possible to exhume
from it the lost teachings of Protagoras, it is clear
that in the study of Plato's great dialogues, and par-
ticularly of the ThewMus, lies the master-key to the
understanding of the whole intellectualistic position
in philosophy.

OXFORD, December, 1907.

THE fifth century B.C. was not only politically, but also
intellectually, tEev"great' age of Greece. In the history of
thought also it makes an epoch. In it philosophic man for
the first time rouses himself from a nightmare of childish
guessing and a stupor of helpless wonder at the vast uncom- 1
prehended and uncontrolled panorama of external nature. |
For the first time he consciously realizes that he is the
Spectator of it all, that the whole world's infinite complexity
exists in relation to him, and that he has not merely an eye
to see but also a mind to devise and a hand to execute, if he
but has a spirit to dare, that if he will but strive patiently
and resolutely to co-ordinate his powers, he may aspire to
control the flux and to divert it into channels conducive to
the attainment of his highest ends. To the truth of which
man caught his first glimpse then he has never since grown
wholly blind again, though its vision has often been obscured
by the intoxicants and opiates to the use of which his weak-
ness and his sufferings have degraded him.

This first outburst of Humanism, moreover, was in some
respects the greaTest of the humanistic eras. For it was the
freest and most spontaneous and the least hampered by man-
made obstacles. All the later revivals of Humanism have
been subsequent to the institution of a learned caste whose
academic spirit is always largely occupied with ritual obser-
vances for giving his due (and not infrequently a good deal
more) to the Demon of Pedantry ; and so they have had to
live and operate in and upon a more or less unfavourable
atmosphere. They could not always succeed in developing
their Humanism to the full.

The Humanists of the Benaissance, for example, were
doubtless sincere humanists in their intentions. They tried

8

to set man's spirit free from the crushing armour of Scholastic
learning, which had immobilized the medieval sage quite as
effectively as his defensive mail had immobilized the medi-
eval knight. But they soon fell lamentably short of their
noble design and of the proud name they had assumed. TotaL.
v humanity cannot be identified with any one of its functions,
and so ' humaner letters ' are neither the ' whole duty of man "
nor even more than comparatively humane. In Scotland
1 humanity ' was academically reduced to Latin. Hence an
impartial judge might soon doubt the superiority of Human-
ism over the Scholasticism which it supplanted in this very
> point of pedantry. Pedantry is the poverty of the soul, and
V like poverty it is always with us, while it is only occasionally
that the human spirit rises in revolt ag unst the dust-storms
of finely comminuted knowledge with which it buries alive
all originality and force.

Unfortunately we have little direct knowledge of this
earliest Humanism. Its heroes and martyrs, Protagoras
and Socrates, have left us no memorial. It is true thatTEy
the irony^ofliistory the spiritual heritage of one of them soon
became a valuable asset, to be disputed over by the philosophic
schools of the fourth century, and that so in the end Socrates
has become for history what it suited the interest of the
strongest, i.e., of the greatest writer, that he should appear.
Plato has made our ' Socrates ' into an intellectualist like him-
self. But this is manifestly one-sided. The teaching of the
real Socrates must have been such as to inspire not only Plato,
but also Xenophon, and Aristippus, and Antisthenes. He
cannot, therefore, have been the beau Mai of intellectualistic
idealism Plato makes him out to be. In his general attitude
towards life he probably came far nearer to the progressive
types of his own age than a careless reader would infer from
Plato. For Plato has made him into a stalking horse in his
campaign against his own professional rivals, the Sophists.
\ The historic Socrates, however, probably got on with Sophists
\ of his time even better than Plato admits in the Protagoras.

This interpretation of Socrates, however, is inferential.
For from his own mouth we have not one authentic word. '
Protagoras was more careful of posterity. He wrote a book,

but owing to no fault of his, there has come down to us as
certainly authentic nothing but two short sentences, which
pierce through the veiling mists of tradition like the glittering
summits of the Wetterhorn. What was the line of thought
which led up to them, what were the reasonings by which
they descended into the souls of men, we can only dimly
guess. Unless indeed there is truth in the claim of Plato
that he had conquered these virgin peaks and left us a trust-
worthy description of this perilous ascent.

It is this claim of Plato's that I propose to examine, and
more specifically, the Protagoras Speech in the Thecetetus
166-68. The conventional view of this speech, which I pro-
pose to contest, is~ftiaTTMs~"5sN -lit LhTjlTi Cke'illic in substance)
as in form, and that in it Plato has tried either to represents
current developments of Protagoreanism made by his dis- \
ciples or to embody his own reflections on the problem of /
putting a reasonable interpretation on an obscure dictum, <
and that the decision between these alternatives does not
greatly matter, because in either case the Speech is com-
pletely refuted in the sequel.

But three weighty reasons may be given for rejecting this
view. (1) The somewhat tentative language Plato uses as to J
the authenticity of the defence undertaken by his ' Socrates ' 1
has of course to be taken quite literally on this theory. It is
taken to mean that Plato felt really doubtful as to whether
Protagoras would have accepted the developments attributed
to him. But it is obviously possible, and indeed more natural,
to understand his phrases otherwise. Why should not Plato
really have felt doubtful about the success of an attempt to
reproduce an authentic line of argument and have known
that his success might be ^impugned ? (2) It is simply not
true that the argument of the speech is refuted, either in the
Thecetetus or anywhere else in Plato. (3)_The conventional
view, lastly, will be found to involve itself in insoTul
culties of a literary kind. A close examination of the argu-
ment will show that if Plato be supposed to be the real author
of the Speech, he has regaled us with the fancies of a man of
straw but told us nothing about the argument of the real

' 1 165 E, 168 C, 169 E, 171 E.

10

Protagoras. Is it not curious moreover that the argument
/ of the Speech is never really answered ? Either, therefore,
Plato is made into a dishonest controversialist who suppresses
his opponent's case and substitutes for it figments of his own,
or into so incoherent a thinker that he cannot see the scope
of an argument he has himself invented.

The alternative theory I venture to suggest will be found
cast ncTsucTi slur upon the moral and intellectual character
of Plato. It credits Plato with an honest desire to state his
opponent's case and assumes merely that he has not fully
grasped an ^alien point of view for the appreciation of which
his whole type of mind unfitted him, and which even so he
has grasped much better than the generality of intellectualists
have done down to the present day. j It proceeds therefore^
from two very reasonable presuppositions, (1) that Plato did
/ know the authentic doctrine of Protagoras, an?^2) that lie
c? diS not know it perfectly! As to the reason, we may please
ourselves^ He may not have actually possessed the sup-
pressed book of Protagoras on ' Truth ' and have been forced
to rely on incomplete memories of its contents. Or again
he may have felt that he had not completely made it
out.

.e reasonableness, however, of these presuppositions will
t appear from an analysis of_the ^Protagoras ' Sj^eech^ar^d
the reply to it as it stands in Plato. The conclusions I shall
try to estabksh are (I) that the Speech is intended to give,
and probably to a large extent succeeds in giving, the authentic
argumentation by which Protagoras defended his great dis-
covery of the relativity of the object of knowledge to the
subject (so far as Plato understood it), because (II), if it is
taken to be a figment of Plato's the great absurdity results,
that Plato did not notice that he was refuting himself, and
(III), it contains internal evidence showing that Plato never
understood it. (IV) It yields, therefore, trustworthy evidence
for the reconstitution of the actual doctrine of the historic
Protagoras, and (V) ihis is confirmed by the fact that it
actually contains the solution of the problem with which
Plato wrestles vainly in the same dialogue, that of Truth and

Error.

1

11

It is further clear that these positions are not unconnected.
For if the current view that the positions taken up in the
Speech are disposed of in the progress of the argument can
be shown to be untenable, if it is demonstrable that the argu-
ments of the Speech are neither refuted nor even correctly
represented in the sequel, it becomes highly probable that
Plato has not understood it aright, and that therefore it is
not reallv of his own invention.

If then the substance of the Speech is not Plato's, whose
is it? Burely J^rotagoras's claim to it should take precedence "
over any other. Attempts have been made to attribute its"
arguments to Aristippus, on the ground that his is probably
the philosophy attacked in the earlier parts of the Theatetus.
But if our conception of the real relation of Socrates to the
thought of his contemporaries be right, the humanistic strain
in Aristippus may well have come down to him from his master
Socrates, on whom the spirit of the fifth century was doubt-
less operative, though Plato has done his utmost to erase
all trace thereof from his picture of their common master.
Hence an agreement between the doctrines of Protagoras
and Aristippus is in no wise inexplicable, nor would it prove
that the Speech belonged to the latter.

As for the invention of imaginary Protagoreans against
whom Plato is imagined to be so eager to contend as to ignore
their master, that surely is too desperate an expedient to be
sanctioned by any sane principles of historical criticism. In
some cases, as in palliating the clearly deliberate misrepre-
sentation of Plato by Aristotle, such an expedient may
commend itself to the timidity of reconcilers reluctant to
admit that one great thinker may fail to appreciate another,
though in this case we know at least that there was a
Platonic School on which to impose the burden Aristotle
falsely fastens on to Plato, and though even then the hypo-
thesis does not cover all the facts. But in general a master^
contends with masters and not with disciples. Moreover,

12

there is no clear evidence that Protagoras had any disciples.1
His appears to have been one of the rare (but all the sadder)
cases in which persecution (like that of the Japanese Chris-
tians in the seventeenth century) really achieved its purpose.
There is no evidence to show that Protagoras's book survived
the Athenian persecution. The one copy which, it is reason-
able to suppose, no persecution could extort, viz., Protagoras's
own, must have perished with him when the ship went down
on which he was fleeing from the pious wrath of the Athen-
ians and the fate which subsequently befel Socrates. Hence
it is no wonder that nobody seems to know anything about
Protagoras's book, beyond the title and the two dicta, except
Plato, and that all the later references to it are plainly based
on his account. And it is remarkable that even Plato does
not seem to have first-hand verbatim knowledge of it, though
we shall see that he must have known a great deal more
about it than any one has done since.

II.

If we are willin^ to accept the Speech as ^enuine Prota-
goreanism, we are enabled to fill up a great and mysterious
lacuna in our knowledge. As at present advised we know
nothing about the context of the Homo Mensura dictum. But
obviously it must have had one, or rather two, one psycho-
logical, the other logic ah No man makes a great discovery
without being led to it by a psychic process. No man venti-
lates what may be taken as a giant paradox, without trying
to make it plausible and palatable to his audience. Especi-
ally if he is a professional teacher, i.e., a man who has lived
all his life under a consciousness that his living depends on
the approval of this same audience.

It is utterly shallow, th^rpfpre. to regard Protagoras's
dictum as an irresponsible freak of subjectivism. Subjec-
tivism from its nature can never be unreflective, any more
than pessimism. Objectivisms and optimisms always are

1 Theodorus in the Thezetetus is represented (1) as his friend, and (2) as
no philosopher but a mathematician. As for the Antimoerus of the
Protagoras (315 A) we never hear of him again.

13

initially unreflective, and frequently remain so to the end.
For the necessities of life have severely schooled us to begin
by turning outward the eye of the soul, and the last thing
that man thinks of, the last thing he discovers, is himself.

It is psychologically certain, therefore, that Protagoras
must have ha'cl, "ancl must MV& Elated, interpgt"^ fp^.sfmg
Jor^ his position. J3nt we are in the unsatisfactory position
of knowing only his conclusion, and neither its premisses
nor its context, and no interpretation of the Thecetetus can
be adequate which takes no account ancl has no explanation
of this fact.

Can -we suppose that Plato was equally unfortunate, equally
ignorant of the context and grounds of Protagoras's dictum ?
Only if we suppose that he neither possessed, nor had ever
read, Protagoras's book on ' Truth ' ; nay, that he had never
heard it discussed by those who had read it. But this is ex-
tremely improbable. It igjindeed just possible that Plato,
knew no more than we do. It is quite possible that Athenian
persecution so successfully suppressed the-book that no copy
escaped to be perused by Plato. Indeed this is even probable,
under the very peculiar circumstances of the catastrophe
which ended the career of Greece's greatest Sophist. We may
infer this also from the hesitations and apologies with which
Plato always accompanies his account of Protagoras. _ These
become intelligible if we suppose that he possessed no copy
of the book himself and was not in a position to cite textu-
aUy. anything but the two admitted dicta.

But it is incredible that Plato should not have been
familiar wTith the substance of the book. It was published,
as the crown and outcome of the long career of the most
popular teacher of the day, in Athens, Plato's native city, in
411 (or 412) B.C., when Plato was already well advanced in
his teens. If he was then already interested in philosophy,
he must surely have read it, or at least have heard it dis-
cussed. Even if he was not, he must have been the con-
temporary of dozens who had read it and of hundreds who
had heard it discussed; for in a democracy, which cannot
act with a tyrant's promptitude, some time would elapse
before the indignation of the orthodox could gather force

14

enough to lead to its denunciation and destruction, and the
withdrawal of Protagoras from the city. Plato, therefore,
was in a position to ascertain the real arguments of Pro-
tagoras with great exactitude. For it is improbable that
they were protected from reproduction by their abstruse-
ness. Protagoras was not a recluse like Heraclitus, but a
popular lecturer. His arguments cannot have been too subtle
to be committed to memory.

But if Plato knew, not indeed textually but in substance,
the arguments which Protagoras had advanced for his position,
why on earth should he suppress them ? Why should he not
reproduce in his polemic such of them at least as he thought
he could answer ? Why be at pains to invent bogus argu-
ments on behalf of Protagoras, when the genuine ones were
extant, and might even be remembered by the seniors in his
own audience? Surely it would have been neither artistic,
nor honest, nor prudent, to attempt more than to re- word in
a condensed form the substance of the genuine argument.
And this is precisely what the Thecetetus indicates through-
out. The remark in 171 E, which is the chief ground for
attributing to Plato the complete fabrication of the Protagoras
Speech, does not imply more than this, if it is not unfairly
pressed.

III.

If Plato had invented the Protagoras Speech, he would
surely have made a better job of it polemically. He would
have taken care not to put into the mouth of his ' Protagoras '
anything his ' Socrates ' did not subsequently refute. If^
therefore, there can be found in the Speech arguments which
tjie Theatetus does not refute, we may be sure that they were
not of Plato's invention. And if Plato thinks he has refuted
them and it can be shown that he is wrong, this confidence
will be strengthened ; there will remain no reasonable doubt
but that he has tried in his Speech to represent a real op-
ponent's actual views, that he has failed to understand him,
and therefore failed to dispose of him, as he supposes.

An unprejudiced reading of the Protagoras Speech will, I
believe, bear out all these contentions.

15

The Speech falls into three parts. (1) 166 A— C, (2) 166
D— 1M7 D, and (3) 167 D— 168 B. (1) ' Protagoras ' begins
with a protest against the verbalism of the 'Socratic' con-
tentions that have preceded. The memory of a perception
must not be lumped together with the perception. It is in
no wise absurd that the same person should know and not
know the same thing — at least, we must add, if as in Plato's
examples (165, etc.) the thing is taken in a different reference.
As for the difficulty of the change in the knower which
results from his interaction with the object, we can, if you
insist that he cannot be identical in change, regard him as
an. infinite plurality-1 ' No', says Protagoras, ' face the real
point : deny outright that we have peculiar and individual
perceptions, which we alone experience.'

In part (2) he expounds his true doctrine and refutes the
misinterpretations put upon it. ' While I affirm that each */ 3 £
man is the measure of what is " true " for him, I do not deny

f^^Sff^^^

that one man may be 10,000 times as good as an o trie" r, in this
very point of what appears to him and is to him "true". It^
is thus that the wise man is distinguished from the fool ; he
is one who is able, when things appear to us and are bad, to
make them appear and be good.' [I.e., who teaches us how
to make the best of a bad job and to adjust ourselves to life.]
1 Your own illustration of the sick man to whom what is sweet
to the healthy seems bitter tells against you, Socrates. It is
futile to make either of them any "wiser" than they are, or
to declare that the sick man is uninstructed in judging as he /
does : what he needs is to be altered ; for the contrary condi- v
tion is the better. Thus the sophist's task is practical like the
doctor's ; but his ministrations use words, instead of drugs,
to produce a better state of mind. There is no question,
therefore, of turning " false " opinions into "true"; all we
opine is always " true " in so far as it expresses what we
experience. Lut whereas a soul in bad condition opines

1 Compare with this James's analysis of the knower into a succession
of momentary I's, each inheriting and summing up his predecessor. Any
dynamic account of knowing will tend to have recourse to such descrip-
tions, in order to combat the useless assumption of a static knower, and
will be similarly charged with destroying the knower's reality.

16

badly, a good one produces good thoughts. Some mistakenly
call such " better " appearances " truer," but I merely " better "
or " worse " but not " truer ". Wise men, therefore, are they
who, like the physicians of bodies, or the cultivators of plants,
train men to perceive aright. And the sage or * sophist '
performs a similar service also for cities ; wherefore he earns
his pay.

' (3) We see, therefore, that in a sense, though no one can
be said to opine falsely, some are wiser than others.' The
;Speech concludes with a grave admonition to ' Socrates ' to
cease from arguing disputatiously, and points out the harm
this does by disgusting people with philosophy, and the perils
of arguing from the current usage of words which only lead
to puzzles.

&

IV.

-rm —

In its whole tone and contents this Speech seems to me
xactly what we should expect from an attempt at authentic
reproduction. The anti-intellectualism, the emphasis on the
practical side, the defence of pay for intellectual work, the
didactic tone, the high mogaLgeriousness (which Plato attests
also in the Protagoras), the disgust with the endless and often
aimless ' dialectics ' of the Greek boulevardier, the consciousness
of the dangers of verbal traps, these are all characteristics
we might expect to find in the veteran teacher whose mission
it was to guide the education of a democratic age.

Why then should we hesitate to attribute to him also what
is the cardinal point of his defence, viz., the distinction between
the formal dairn^ to Jruth which every judgment makes and its
? ThisTpomt is made lucidly, repeatedly and emphatically,
and iHny paraphrase has brought it out still more, the reason
is merely that, thanks to Plato, most philosophers have
become involved in so dense an intellectualistic bias that
anything which runs counter to it has to be made very clear

But the distinction is quite clearly in the Greek,
is also quite clearly the complete answer to the attacks
on the humanism, miscalled the ' subjectivism,' of Protagoras,
and the solution of the problem of a common truth. It explains

17

how we pass from individual claims to social values, and
attribute To them an objective validity, ^be bricks ont of ..
which the temple o^ Truth is built are the individual judg- "
ments which supply the material. "Every one is continually
making them. ^BuTofthese a large proportion are half-baked,
or broken, or of the wrong shapes. So these have to be re-
jected. They may still seem to their makers subjectively

* true,' but they are objectively useless. Whoever, on the
other hand, has the skill to devise a form of brick which is
useful finds hosts of imitators. He becomes an architectonic
authority, and is called in to mould or re-mould the bricks of
others. And so dominant patterns arise which prevail and
attain an objective validity. But this validity is the reward
of value^ and the result of selections based on experience.
The ' validity ' of a claim to truth is neither logically nor >
etymologically other than its 'strength. Tnere is no need

to presuppose any inaccessible supercelestial archetype which &
ratifies and sanctifies by a suprasensible communion, the
human imitations we inexplicably make. Still less do we need
any deus ex ?nachina supernatural ly to establish by his fiat any
initial ^commonness* of trutEQ We do not even need any

* independent ' object magically authenticating its ' true copy '
in our thoughts.1 All we^jieed is that there should hg^
facto differences in the value, and therefore in the subsequent

validity, of different people's judgments. And of these we
have, of course, abundance.

It is noticeable, however, that Protagoras is represented as
declining to call these superior values * truths '. They are.
' bej.ter ' but not ' truer '. If so, he did not yet perceive that

1 Lest I should hereabouts be unintelligently charged with denying

* objective reality' altogether, I must append a note to this remark.
The only sense (out of many) in which a Humanist theory of knowledge
does away with 'independent objects' is the utterly nugatory one in
which the 'object' is made so 'independent' as to transcend human
cognition altogether : all the other senses of ' objectivity,' it expounds and
explains, each in its proper place. It is most unfortunate that both

* realists ' and ' absolute idealists' should apparently have piqued them-
selves on, quite irrationally, affirming just this superfluous absurdity,
and on tying all the legitimate senses of ' objectivity ' on to it. Of. my
Studies in Humanism, pp. 439, 461-62.

.
w an^

\\

a \ all 'truths ' are ' values,' and therefore ' goods,' even though
an individual's truths are good and satisfying only to himr
their vame is verY restricted, because their currency
r sma^- Nor agam can ne have seen that the same ambig-

\ uity which pervades truth-values pervades also all the rest.
'^ ^ ,VMany things are judged 'good,' which are not really good,
"""^just as they are judged 'true' without being really true.
Everywhere there is needed a bridge of validation by use to
cross the gap between claim and validity. - But it is also
possible either that Plato has not here reproduced the full
subtlety of Protagoras's argument, or that Protagoras was
hindered from expressing himself fully only by the poverty
of Greek philosophic language, not yet enriched by the
genius of Plato. Anyhow, the difference between Protagorean
and modern Humanism concerns only a subordinate point
of terminology.1

What now, we may proceed to inquire, does Plato make of
this important philosophic distinction he has attributed to
Protagoras ? It is astounding to find that he makes nothing
of it whatsoever. He treats it almost as badly as the other
three un-Platonic points made in the Protagoras Speech, (1)
the repudiation of intellectualism and of the doctrine that
badness is simply ignorance (166 E — 167 A), (2) the demand
for an alteration of reality by practical action and not by dialec-
tics (166 D and 168 A), and (3) the declaration that the State
*", may err morally like the individual, and may need the services
I of the moral expert (168 B). These three points the Platonic
4 Socrates ' totally ignores in the sequel.

The conception of truth-values he just refers to, but his
reference to it is worse than none at all. For it only shows.
that Plato had no conception of the meaning and scope of
the argument he had just stated. In 169 D, he starts again
from the bare dictum as if the Speech had done nothing to
explain its real meaning nor given it a philosophic context.
And the reasons ' Protagoras ' had given for the dictum are
actually treated as concessions derogating from its validity
and inconsistent with his original assertion ! Nothing could

1 Cf. Studies in Humanism, p. 36.

19

be more unfair and unenlightened, or even more contrary to
the very wording of the Speech. For in the Speech ' Prota-
goras ' emphatically puts his doctrine forward as his very own,
and distinguishes it from the laxer use of popular language,
(167 B1). And well he might ; for it is the vindication, not
only of his whole career as a skilled adviser and educator,
but of the liberty which he concedes to every one to hold by
his own experience. Such, a profound misconstruction seems,
possible only in one who was reproducing with imperfect -V
success an argument he did not understand. /

There follows immediately afterwards a still more extra-

ordinary proof of the discomfort which the Protagorean
mode of thought had occasioned in Plato's mind. For in
169 E, it is suggested that as Protagoras is not present to-
confirmthe ' concessions ' made on his behalf, it will perhaps-
be better to restrict the discussion to his own words, the ^
original dictum !

By this master-stroke of dialectical manipulation the
whole defence of Protagoras is declared invalid and set
aside, and we are once more reduced to the bare dictum
and stripped of all knowledge of what it really meant in its con-
text. This procedure is so arbitrary that even Plato's literary
art cannot quite reconcile his readers to it. But on our
hypothesis it is at least intelligible. On the hypothesis that
Plato has concocted the Protagoras Speech it becomes utterly
unthinkable. For how can one believe that, after propounding
a defence of Protagoras which was at least novel and striking
even if it was not completely adequate, Plato should at once
have dropped it, merely because he suddenly felt a consci-
entious qualm lest Protagoras himself should not have ap-
proved of it ? Surely whether the argument of the Speech *
was Protagoras's or Plato's, once it was stated, it should
have been answered, and in the latter case at least it could
have been answered : the presumption, therefore, is that Plato-
dispensed himself from this duty because he perceived that it
surpassed his powers. For it is worth noting that though
the Speech is evicted, it is never refuted. Its points are

^

a or] rives TO. <pavTa(rp.aTa VTTO direipias d\Tj6f) KaXoiKTiv cy o> 8f j9f X T i a>
ra trtpa T&V er(p<0v, d\r) Q c <TTf pa de ovdev.

20

almost ostentatiously ignored henceforth, but no attempt is
made to answer any one of them, and the argument becomes
almost farcical in its unfairness. The logical value, there-
fore, of the ensuing argument is slight.

For example, (1) in 170 A Socrates insists on treating the
difference between the authority and the fool as merely one
in knowledge, despite the protest in 167 A, against this very
trick of intellect ualism. Protagoras having denied that
differences in truth-value were merely intellectual, Plato
makes a point of reaffirming his intellectualist analysis
dogmatically and in the very same words. The protest of
the Speech, therefore, has been wholly vain.
f (2) So, too, were the protest against relying too much on
popular language and the explanation of the apparently un-
familiar assertion that all always judge ' truly '. For as
170 C shows, Plato continues to base his objections on the
current use of the words ' true ' and ' false '.

(3) The argument in 170 D, which seems a clincher to Plato,
is almost ludicrously inconclusive to one who has grasped
the manifest meaning of the Protagoras Speech. Itjs in no
wise absurd that an opinion (which you may roughly call

he same ') should be ' true ' to me and ' false ' to you ; nor
that one man should be right and 10,000 wrong.

For $) it may well be ' true ' to a lover that his mistress
is the most beauteous creature in the world ; but it by no
means follows that this is ' true ' to the rest of the world, nor
is it even desirable that it should be. If then it is true that
there is a peculiar and personal side to every piece of know-
ledge, he who .-has the experience alone can judge of its value./
He alone feels where the shoe pinches or sees the subjective
glow which transfigures the landscape, fi) Even where we
feel entitled to abstract sufficiently from this individuality of
concrete experiences to speak of a 'common' situation, it
may be perfectly legitimate for different minds to evaluate
it differently. All views may be right from their several
standpoints, and they generally are so more or less. , To
deny that the ' true ' mode of attaining the Good varies
•according to the circumstances of the agent is both intoler-
ance and ineptitude, (c) Athanasius contra mundum and the

21

fact that all new truth necessarily starts in a minorit

one, should moderate our reliance on numbers as a test of
truth. ' Universal consensus ' is a consequence and not a
cause of truth.

(4) It is in vain, therefore, that Plato attempts (in 170 E
—171 C) to show that on his own principles Protagoras must

bow to the verdict of the majority who reject his dictum.
Plato's argument here is completely vitiated by the ' ambiguity
of truth,' l and as it completely ignores the distinction made
by the Protagoras Speech, it is a mere ignoratio elenchi. For
' Protagoras ' has already explained how on his theory
scientific authority was constituted. He could, therefore,
reply — 'My dictum may be "true" (claim) for me, even
though it is not " true" for all the world besides. There is
no contradiction in this, for we are different. I am Protagoras ;
you. to put it mildly, are — not ! And I may already be right,
though no one else perceives it yet. For eventually men may
come to see that my view is really " better ". And then the
validity of the truth I now claim will be admitted.'

(5) In 171 E — 172 C Plato propounds a restriction of the
dictum's "cTaTm^to matters of sense-perception, exempting
matters of health and disease from its sway, and he identifies
this restricted claim with the position of the Protagoras
Speech.

This passage, rj r;/iet9 vTreypatyapev ffoijOovvres IIp(oTay6paf
which has already been referred to (p. 14), at first sight
seems direct evidence in favour of the view that the Speech
is really a Platonic invention, and if this were the only or
the best interpretation of the remark, it would be almost
fatal to the contention of this study. But in point of fact,
it may be shown that it is only part of Plato's misconstruction
of the Speech, and that upon examination it tells strongly in
favour of the view that the Speech is genuinely Protagorean
and has been utterly misunderstood by Plato. To put the
matter quite bluntly, it is not true that the Speech said what
Plato's ' Socrates ' now says it said- Tile discrepancies between
what was said and what is now alleged may doubtless look

1 As I have shown in Studies in Humanism, pp. 146-46.

22

small, but they are not insignificant ; and it is obvious that
nothing very glaring could be expected. For if Plato had
become aware of any considerable divergence between the
text of the Speech and his subsequent version of it, he would
have modified one or the other.

(a) The assertion that the restriction now proposed is a
•concession to common-sense on the part of Protagoreanism
is merely a repetition of the remark in 169 D. It does not
become more plausible thereby. And it has already been
-explained how profound a misconception of the chief distinc-
tion made in the Speech is implied in this assertion.

(b) Nothing is said in the Speech about a division of terri-
tories whereby the sphere of perception would be left to the
dictum, while that of good and evil, and of health and disease
would be assigned to the control of authority. The conten-

, ' tion of the Speech was that of judgments equally true one
) might be better than another. And this was laid down uni-
versally. Neither subjectivity nor valuation was confined to
sense-perceptions, thus implicitly giving the lie to Plato's
attempt to fuse the humanism of Protagoras with the sensa-
tionalism of his day, an attempt the arbitrary nature of
which is as good as confessed in ' Socrates's ' remark in
152 C, that he is divulging a ' secret doctrine ' to an astonished
world. No restriction, therefore, of the* personal implication
in all knowing to the sphere of mere perception can for a
moment be entertained by any' logical Protagoreanism, and
this implication must carry the universality of valuations
with it. If e.g., I am short-sighted and you are not, your
visual perceptions will be * better ' than mine. But this will
not make them ' true ' to me. The fact that you can read
print at a distance impossible to me, does not enable me to
do so, though the manifest superiority of your practical ad-
justments will induce me to admit and to envy the superior-
!ity of your perceptions. I shall continue to see a blur, where
you see clearly, as before. It would seem, therefore, that in
attempting to apply the distinction of the Speech, Plato has
restricted it in a way which the Speech does not warrant and
the facts refute. Surely a curious fact on the hypothesis that
he was himself the author of the distinction !

23

(c) Plato's quotation of the words of the Speech is seriously
inaccurate. He substitutes 'healthful' and * diseased,' for
•' better ' and ' worse '. But in the Speech these were merely
illustrations of the general principle, and the distinction was
not restricted to them.

(d) The argument abqutjhe cities in ITfl^A — B is both inac-
curate a_nd absurd". Nothing was said in the Spee~cfr~arbout
the ' advantageous ; ' the terms used were ' good ' and ' evil '.
Moreover, the compromise proposed is impossible, as Plato
must have been fully aware. You cannot allow States
to judge as they please about the just and the moral,
if they are to be controlled by a perception of their true
•advantage. For their ideas about justice also may chance to
be extremely disadvantageous to them, and may therefore
require to be altered. The * Protagoras ' of the Speech had
talked no such nonsense: he had very sensibly and truly re-
marked that the opinions of States about the just might have
to be altered, just as those of the sick man about the
sweet.

la short, Plato's references do not exactly reproduce either
the words or the sense of the ' Protagoras ' Speech, and thereby
prove pretty conclusively that he was not the real author of its
contentions. For those who insist' on believing that he was,
his whole handling of the Speech must seem an unfathomable
mystery. He first contrives this brilliant Speech, which con-
tains a number of points, new and unheard of in all Platonic
philosophy, together with one distinction of capital importance.
And then he goes on as if he did not know what he had done,
as if nothing had happened ! The main point is blankly
ignored, the references to the Speech are all curiously vague
and inexact, and the whole Speech is almost at once set aside
as possibly inaccurate, on an absurd pretext that the wording
is not by Protagoras. If this was the way in which he was
going to treat it, why did Plato trouble to make a statement
he could make so little of? The Thecetetus would have been
gayer and more forceful without a long, halting and impotent
discussion of what seems a half-understood position. Nothing
but external compulsion would drive an expert controversi-
alist to such shifts. But may not such compulsion have been

*

24

forthcoming from the expectations of his older readers, who
remembered the actual reasonings of Protagoras and required
of Plato an attempt to meet them ?

And the philosopher must urge this difficulty still more
insistently than the literary critic. The The&tetus contains
•/a position of immense philosophic importance, whether it
originated with Protagoras or with Plato. It is never dealt
with. Why not? And is not the philosopher seriously
concerned to estimate how much it detracts from the se-
curity of Plato's chosen creed to have left a hostile strong-
hold, however weakly garrisoned, untaken, nay unassailed,
in his rear ?

(6) When after a long digression, in the course of which
Plato emphasizes the hopeless transcendence of the truly
real and valuable with the utmost acerbity, the argument is-
resumed in 177 C, Plato first, quite superfluously, proves
what the Protagoras of the Speech had long ago pointed out,.
viz., that cities often do not know their own advantage.

(7) InJL78_A a fresh point is made. Can it be maintained
that each man is the measure not only of his present per-
ception, but also of the future ? Will that be exactly as he
anticipates ? And doe£ not the knowledge of the advantage-
ous depend mainly o^i the future ?

The Platonic ' Socrates ' appears finally to rest his case on

this point and on the argument in 171 C [our No. (4) ], by

which Protagoras was alleged to refute himself. In reality,

^however, the appeal to the future leads to a triumphant vin-

/ dication of the Humanist interpretation. For how does the

L.f uture decide between two rival theories of truth ? By the

/\ value of the consequences to which they severally lead.

< That is precisely the meaning of the pragmatic testing of

truth by its consequences. Whether Protagoras would have

replied in this way if the point had been brought to his notice,

we are not, of course, in a position to say ; but enough has

probably been said to show that if we read the The&tetus

critically and do not credulously swallow every claim Plato

chooses to make without verifying it, there can be no question

of a refutation of the argument of the Protagoras Speech by

the subsequent criticism.

25

V.

Plato himself, moreover, was a better judge of the value of
his argument than his followers, and so was not unaware of
the incomplete character of his dialectical victory over the
bare dictum of Protagoras. He realizes plainly that in order
to justify his rejection of it, it is incumbent on him to devise a
tenable theory of Error. For even ' subjectivism ' cannot be
refuted by more scepticism, and even a rationalistic theory
of knowledge is bound to discover some difference between
* truth ' and ' error'. This implication of his logical position,
was not, of course, a thing to make too dangerously prominent,
but it is clearly the meaning of the remark in 190 E,_that
' if we cannot show that false opinion is possible, we shall
be obliged to admit many absurd things '. The ' many absurd
things ' are the Protagorean view of Truth as it has been
interpreted by Plato. And the connexion between it and a
failure to solve the problem of jError is this : if the possibility
of Error cann.ot be evpla-inpri ffr*»~> ™™ ^ nr> «"fQiQQ npimrm ' :
and if there can be no ' false opinion ' then all opinions are
true ; but this was precisely what Protagoras had meant, ac-
cording to Plato. Hence the Platonic inquiry is on its own
showing in the awkward position of being bound to discover a
tenable theory of Error in order to save itself from a relapse
into a Protagorean ' subjectivism,' which it has itself rashly
declared to be equivalent to an abolition of all truth.

Nor does the fact that the Platonic interpretation of Prota-
goras is wrong, in any way relieve the logical pressure upon
Plato's intellectualism at this point. For as an ad hominem
refutation, a failure to-devise a theory of Error tells against
Plato's theory in any case. Whether or not Protagoras had
really denied the possibility of Error, Plato's theory of know-
ledge must irremediably collapse, if it cannot account for the
existence of Error. And, unlike many modern intellectual-
ists, who seem to contemplate with equanimity their total
failure to discriminate between truth and error and to regard
it as quite an unimportant defect in a theory of knowledge,
Plato saw this clearly.

Hence the zeal and perseverance with which the inquiry

26

is prosecuted. Plato is battling pro aris et focis, to save
the central fire of intellectualisin from extinction, and it is
probably because he realized this as none of his successors
have done after him, that he produced, his great classical dis-
cussion of the problem, which is distinguished by ingenuity
and ennobled, though not saved, by the frank confession of
final failure.

That this failure was an inevitable outcome of Plato's pre-
suppositions is the next point for us to understand. We
shall in understanding this understand also that no intel-
lectualist theory of Error is possible, and consequently no
really adequate intellectualist theory of knowledge. For a
theory of knowledge which cannot explain Error cannot
discriminate it from Truth, and so cannot explain that
either.

With the usual naive objectivism of ancient metaphy-
^ sicians, Plato starts from the assumption that Error is some-
/* thing objective and inherent in the object of knowledge. I.e.,
' Plato has made the usual abstraction from the human and
personal side of knowledge and assumed that this can have
no bearing on the theory of logic. If, therefore, this assump-
tion is wrong, we can at once account for the failure of his
efforts, without being driven into the scepticism, in which
intellectualist epistemologies invariably end.

But to be more specific, if the possibility of Error is de-
pendent on the nature of the object, there must be an object
of error as well as an object of knowledge, and the error
must consist in our taking the one for the other, or getting
the one when we want the other. To know this, however,
we must necessarily know both. We must know, that is, the
Jobject of error as such, and to do this would of course be not
jerror, but truth. For we should ' apprehend it as it is '. Again,
in so far as an object of knowledge is involved in error recog-
nised as such, it is known truly. Error, therefore, always
involves the contradiction that we must simultaneously both
know and not know in the same cognitive reference. Thus
a theory of Error is unthinkable. The same conclusion
follows if we start from any formal view of Truth. For we
thereby incapacitate ourselves for distinguishing between a

•27

truth and a claim to truth, and as the latter may be wrong,
error becomes a kind of truth and we are, once more, unable
to distinguish between truth and error.

Such in essence is the impasse to which all Plato's in-
genious speculations in the end conducted him. He could
not find the real clue to the maze, because of his initial abstrac-
tions. Having abstracted from the personal maker of the
judgment, he never noticed that errors do not exist as such
until they are found out. A false judgment is in form indis-
tinguishable from a true one, a self-contradictory judgment
being unmeaning as expressed. Hence in dealing with errors
no man can ever be simultaneously in a condition of both
knowing and not knowing. While we maintain the 'error,'
we judge it to be 'true ' : when we have discovered it to be
an ' error,' we no longer affirm it. As critics we can of course
perceive errors which others judge to be true. Indeed, the
' errors' that trouble us are generally not our own, but those
of others, which they affirm and we deny. But when the
traditional 'logic,' after tabooing all systematic reference to
the psychological context of its subject-matter, proceeds to
treat of Error in the abstract, it declines to look beyond the
fact that ' the same ' proposition is both affirmed and denied,
both known and not known. I.e., it has abstracted from this
difference in the persons who affirm and reject the errone-
ous judgment. But this difference is essential, because it
may always affect and dissolve the unity of what has been
called ' the same '. Hence ' logic ' has debarred itself from
all intelligible treatment of the question.

The second point to be grasped is that the seat of Error is
not in any defective configuration of the ' object/ but in its
relation to a cognitive purpose. That some errors consist in
the affirmation of non-existent objects is not only unimpor-
tant, but wholly irrelevant. It is irrelevant because it in-
volves a confusion of an ontological with a logical * object '.
'TheJogic.ai. 'object' is never non-existent, even though we
may be discussing Centaurs, Chimaeras, Absolutes, intellect-
ualistic theories of knowledge and other ontological nonen-
tities. But all errors denote the defeat of a cognitive purpose.
Hence the failure of a purposive thought to attain the aim

28

or * object ' which would have satisfied it, can never be treated
in abstraction from tne personal aspecFotJoiowmg. ITcan-
not be described per se or be represented in merely formal
(and therefore verbal) terms. It always implies a relation to
something beyond the two ends of the proposition. It is
nothing intrinsic in the judgment, it is never to be judged
as a purely intellectual thing.

How, on the other hand, does this problem look if we
approach it from the aspect of knowledge for the first time
seen and emphasized by Pjotagoras? . It will be found that
this much-maligned and little understood theory has no
difficulty in coping with it. For it starts with human
knowing, not with ' ideals ' of a ' perfect ' knowledge inac-
cessible to man. Every judgment is a claim to 'truth,' i.e.,
an experiment with ' reality ' as it appears to us. But such
experiments may fail as well as prosper. If they succeed,
we recognize their value and hail them ' true '. If they fail,,
wholly or in part, we condemn as ' false,' and admitting that
we were ' wrong,' withdraw the values claimed. Gradually
in the course of time ther;j, are thus segregated two great
realms, of light and darkness, Truth and Error. But between
the two will lie much disputed territory, where, either because
our experience is not yet adequate or because our experi-
ments have not been decisive, there is ample room for
doubt and difference of opinion.

But only a mind thoroughly corrupted with dialectic and
corroded with scepticism will base on its existence a charge-
that to recognize these facts is to abolish the conception of
Truth. In reality we are here on the holy ground where,,
by the continuous revision of values and the rejection of
'errors,' Truth is made, where knowledge is alive and grow-
ing. And the fertile soil yields the only sort of truth that
has use or meaning for man. You cannot, it is true, raise
on it any humanly fruitless and unprofitable crop of Platonic
Ideas. If the seeds of such sterilities are scattered on the
ground by breezes that issue from the bags of ^Eolus, they
will fail to germinate in a soil so richly manured by the
heart's-blood of human desire and the bones of the martyrs
of human science. But our loss is nil ; for such static forms-

29

would be utterly unsuited to our needs. We need plastic
conceptions that can adjust themselves to the dynamic nature
of reality, and, in Plato's parlance, can know the 'flux.' It
is only in unmeaning tautologies that the ' ideas ' remain
immobile even in the single judgment. In all real knowing
subject and predicate always have their meaning changed by
being combined in a judgment, alike whether this growth
enriches only the mind of a single knower or extends to all
those who are interested in the advancement of human
knowledge. All .our concepts, therefore, as James says, are
teleological weapons of the human mind.

Plato, doubtless, would never have admitted that such mere
instruments of human knowing were true ' Ideas '. But
neither he nor any of his many followers has ever been able
to devise a tenable formula to express the (unthinkable) rela-
tion of the plastic ' Ideasjj^e-use to the immutable ' Ideas '
they have vainly po^tuTated. Hence though we may be glad
that he has expressed for all time the perfect exemplar of the
rationalistic temper, we cannot in these days imitate his
superb fidelity to an impracticable ideal. The growth of
Science and the application of Knowledge to Life are too
stupendous facts to be ignored even in the seclusion of
academic lecture-rooms. And so, though philosophers as a
body will naturally be the last persons to admit it, it must
eventually be recognized that Protagoras's vision of a Truth
that did not shun commerce with man was truer than Plato's
dream of an Eternal Order that transcends all human un-
derstanding.

30

NOTE.

Since the above study was written my attention has been
called to an article on Plato and Protagoras in the Philosophi-
cal Review, xvi., 469, (September, 1907) by Prof. J. Watson.
Its appearance is a welcome sign of the times in so far as
it indicates a perception that the old controversy between
Protagoras and Plato is by no means dead and recognizes that
it turns on essentially the same point as the modern issue be-
tween Humanism and Absolutism. But Prof. Watson could
have very materially enhanced the timeliness and relevance
of his discussion by taking more adequate cognizance of the
Neo-Protagorean position. Even if nay Studies in Humanism
(pp. 33-38, 145-46, and 298-347) appeared too recently to be
used by him, he might at least have referred to a quite ex-
plicit article which appeared in the Quarterly Review so long
ago as January, 1906. Instead of this he confines his polemic
to a passing remark in the Preface of my Humanism, the
full justification of which is only forthcoming in the present
study. It is, however, satisfactory to find that he also thinks
that Plato meant to give the veritable views of Protagoras.
He holds also that Plato, when writing the Thecetetus, had
access to the treatise of Protagoras, a position which I have
given reasons for thinking not only intrinsically improbable,
in view of the apologetic tone of the Platonic reproductions,
but also untenable, as ignoring the external authority of
Diogenes Laertius, ix., 52. So despite of what I said in
Studies in Humanism, p. 37, it now seems to me far more
likely that Plato was relying wholly on oral tradition about a
work that was no longer extant. The Speech Prof. Watson
ascribes to a ' developed ' Protagoreanism fabricated by Plato

31

himself, without attempting to explain why Plato should
proceed to ' develop ' a doctrine for which he had not yet
stated the authentic grounds, and then return to the unde-
veloped form without refuting its ' developments '. He says
nothing about the relevance of the discussion of Error, and
particularly of 190 E, to the issue, and his whole exposition
of Plato's arguments is unfortunately far too general and
goes too little into the detail of the text to establish any of.
his contentions.

THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED-

RETURN TO:

CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT
198 Main Stacks

LOAN PERIOD 1
Home Use

2

3

4

5

6

ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS.

Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date.
Books may be renewed by calling 642-3405.

DUE AS STAMPED BELOW.

npCi

6 2001

V CLUUT

MAR 2 8 2005

FORM NO. DD6 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
50M 4-04 Berkeley, California 94720-6000