Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/247

192 relation to the sense of sight, no such thing as sound out of relation to the sense of hearing. In fact, take away man and his senses and you take from the universe all these qualities. Hence, in so far at least as these are concerned, it may be said emphatically that man is the measure of the universe; his constitution determines its constitution. It is his nature which gives to things their colour, their sound, their taste, their touch, and their smell.

11. These observations regarding sensation supplied to the Sophists a very strong ground, as they thought, on which to build their assertion that man is the measure of all things. They generalised this maxim. They laid it down in utmost latitude of signification, and their consequent conclusion was, as I have said, that there was nothing true in itself, or right in itself, or beautiful in itself; just as a thing was not sweet in itself, and not red in itself, but took that taste and that colour from the sentient nature of man, so nothing was true in itself or good in itself, but everything derived these qualities from the mind of the person contemplating them.

12. There is only one way in which these Sophistical arguments can be met and rebutted, and that is by drawing a distinction between the essential and true nature, and the unessential and contingent nature of man; in other words, between his universal nature, the nature he has in common with all