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The Speech falls into three parts. (1) 166 A—C, (2) 166 D—167 D, and (3) 167 D—168 B. (1) ‘Protagoras’ begins with a protest against the verbalism of the ‘Socratic’ contentions 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 man is the measure of what is “true” for him, I do not deny that one man may be 10,000 times as good as another, 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.] ‘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 condition 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. But whereas a soul in bad condition opines
- ↑ 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 descriptions, in order to combat the useless assumption of a static knower, and will be similarly charged with destroying the knower’s reality.
