Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/388

 U(J6 fflSTORY OF GREECE. what are their attributes : the uncertainty of (he subject, th shortness of human life, and many other causes, debar me from this knowledge." That the believing public of Athers were seriously indignant at this passage, and that it caused the author to be threatened with prosecution, and forced to quit Athens, we can perfectly understand ; though there seems no sufficient proof of the tale that he was drowned in his outward voyage. But that modern historians of philosophy, who consider the pagan gods to be fictions, and the religion to be repugnant to any reasonable mind, should concur in denouncing Protagoras on this ground as a corrupt man, is to me less intelligible. Xenophanes, 1 and probably many other philosophers, had said the same thing before him. Nor is it easy to see what a superior man was to do, who could not adjust his standard of belief to such fictions ; or what he could say, if he said anything, less than the words cited above from Protagoras; which appear, as far as we can appreciate them, standing without the context, to be a brief mention, in modest and circumspect phrases, of the reason why he said noth- ing about the gods, in a treatise where the reader would expect to find much upon the subject. 2 Certain it is that in the Platonic dialogue, called " Protagoras," that sophist is introduced speaking about the gods exactly in the manner that any orthodox pagan might naturally adopt. The other fragment preserved of Protagoras, relates to his view of the cognitive process, and of truth generally. He taught, that " Man is the measure of all things ; both of that which exists, and of that which does not exist:" a doctrine canvassed and controverted by Plato, who represents that Pro- tagoras affirmed knowledge to consist in sensation, and consid- ered the sensations of each individual man to be, to him, the 1 Xenophanes ap. Sext. Emp. adv. Mathem. vii, 49. 2 The satyrical writer Timon (ap. Sext. Emp. ix, 57), speaking in very respectful terms about Protagoras, notices particularly the guarded lan- guage -which he used in this sentence about the gods ; though this precau- tion did not enable him to avoid the necessity of flight. Protagoras spoke : > IT ua av e%uv dvhaKtjv tirieneitlf TO. firv ov oi Xpaic/tTia', uAAd Qwyrif kKEfiaiero 6pa IJLTJ ovruf SuKpartKov irivuv ijjv^pbv TTOTOV 'Atda 6vy. It would seem, by the last lins as if Protagoras had survived Sokrat&