TWO:The scepticism of Protagoras went beyond theology and extended to all science whatever. Such, at least, seems to have been the force of his celebrated declaration that man is the measure of all things, both as regards their existence and their non-existence.67 According to Plato, this doctrine followed from the identification of knowledge with sensible perception, which in its turn was based on a modified form of the Heracleitean theory of a perpetual flux. The series of external changes which constitutes Nature, acting on the series of internal changes which constitutes each mans personality, produces particular sensations, and these alone are the true reality. They vary with every variation in the88 factors, and therefore are not the same for separate individuals. Each mans perceptions are true for himself, but for himself alone. Plato easily shows that such a theory of truth is at variance with ordinary opinion, and that if all opinions are true, it must necessarily stand self-condemned. We may also observe that if nothing can be known but sensation, nothing can be known of its conditions. It would, however, be unfair to convict Protagoras of talking nonsense on the unsupported authority of the Theaettus. Plato himself suggests that a better case might have been made out for the incriminated doctrine could its author have been heard in self-defence. We may conjecture that Protagoras did not distinguish very accurately between existence, knowledge, and applicability to practice. If we assume, what there seems good reason to believe, that in the great controversy of Nature versus Law, Protagoras sided with the latter, his position will at once become clear. When the champions of Nature credited her with a stability and an authority greater than could be claimed for merely human arrangements, it was a judicious step to carry the war into their territory, and ask, on what foundation then does Nature herself stand? Is not she, too, perpetually changing, and do we not become acquainted with her entirely through our own feelings? Ought not those feelings to be taken as the ultimate standard in all questions of right and wrong? Individual opinion is a fact which must be reckoned with, but which can be changed by persuasion, not by appeals to something that we none of us know anything about. Man is the measure of all things, not the will of gods whose very existence is uncertain, nor yet a purely hypothetical state of Nature. Human interests must take precedence of every other consideration. Hector meant nothing else when he preferred the obvious dictates of patriotism to inferences drawn from the flight of birds.Bruce put the thing out of his mind for the time being. The next morning was a busy one. When the back of it was broken he drove to Tottenham Court Road, where he managed to secure the old-fashioned furniture which had so taken his fancy. He felt pleased with his bargain, but as he repaired to the Lotus Club to lunch with Gilbert Lawrence nothing remained of the old Dutchman's banknotes.
THREE:One day, some few years after the death of Aristotle, a short, lean, swarthy young man, of weak build, with clumsily shaped limbs, and head inclined to one side, was standing in an Athenian bookshop, intently studying a roll of manuscript. His name was Zeno, and he was a native of Citium, a Greek colony in Cyprus, where the Hellenic element had become adulterated with a considerable Phoenician infusion. According to some accounts, Zeno had come to the great centre of intellectual activity to study, according to others for the sale of Tyrian purple. At any rate the volume which he held in his hand decided his vocation. It was the second book of Xenophons Memoirs of Socrates. Zeno eagerly asked where such men as he whose sayings stood recorded there were to be found. At that moment the Cynic Crates happened to pass by. There is one of them, said the bookseller, follow him.12
THREE:
THREE:27Anyone who, like myself, has been able to see in what frame of mind the people were during the first days of the German occupation, cannot believe it possible that they would even think of taking up arms. They lived in an unending terror, tried to forestall the invader's demands, and, if anything was requisitioned, they searched each other's houses to see whether anything was kept back and all the demanded bottles of gin or claret were forthcoming. There was not one who did not keep his door open as widely as possible to prove his complete submissiveness, and to let the Germans enter his house at any time to check what was to be found there. Every moment I saw men or women run into the street offering cigars to the soldiers from open boxes, smiling nervously and desperately, trying to behave as unconcernedly as possible. During those early93 days payment for refreshments was accepted hardly anywhere, and people often refused to accept money from me, because they mistook me for a German.
