Timaeus

INTRODUCTION.

The natural result was that men despaired of attaining philosophic truth.

§ 12. Empedocles. Before we proceed further, perhaps a few words are due to Empedocles. For he seems to have been dimly conscious of the necessity to amalgamate somehow or other the principles which Herakleitos and Parmenides had enunciated, the principles of Rest and Motion. But of any scientific method whereby this should be done he had not the most distant conception. His scheme is crudely physical, a mere mechanical juxtaposition of the two opposites—"a mixing and a separation of the mixed" original: "μῖξίς τε διάλλαξίς τε μιγέντων": a real ontological fusion of them was utterly beyond his thought. Still, although he really contributes nothing to the solution of the problem concerning the One and Many, the fact that he did grope as it were in darkness after it is worthy of notice.

§ 13. The sophists, especially Protagoras. The hopelessness of discovering any certain verity concerning the nature of things found an expression in the sophistic movement. This phase of Greek thought need not detain us long, since it did nothing directly for the advancement of metaphysical inquiry. It is possible enough that the new turn which the sophists gave to men’s thoughts may have done something to prepare the way for psychological introspection, and their studies in grammar and language can hardly have been other than beneficial to the nascent science of logic. From our present point of view however the only member of the profession that need be mentioned is Protagoras, who was probably the clearest and acutest thinker among them all, and who is interesting because Plato has associated his name with some of his own developments of the Herakleitean theory. The historical Protagoras probably did little or nothing more in this direction than to popularize some of the teaching of Herakleitos and to give it a practical turn. What seems true to me, he said, is true for me; what seems true to you is true for you: there is no absolute standard—"man is the measure of all things" original: "πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἄνθρωπος". Therefore let us abandon all the endeavors to attain objective truth and turn our minds to those practical studies which really profit a man. The genuine interest of the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, which Protagoras broached, is to be found in Plato’s development of it; and this will be considered in its proper place. So far as concerns our present study, we see in Protagoras only a striking representative of the reaction against the earlier dogmatic philosophy.