THREE: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.
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THREE:CHAPTER XIX. THE ARRANGEMENT OF ENGINEERING ESTABLISHMENTS.The only purpose of my publication was to convince everybody of this, and thereby prevent the repetition of such a scandalous scene.
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THREE:Thus Roman civilisation, even when considered on its liberal, progressive, democratic side, seems to have necessarily favoured the growth and spread of superstition, because the new social strata which it turned up were less on their guard against unwarranted beliefs than the old governing aristocracies with their mingled conservatism and culture. But this was not all; and on viewing the empire from another side we shall find that under it all classes alike were exposed to conditions eminently inconsistent with that individual independence and capacity for forming a private judgment which212 had so honourably distinguished at least one class under the republican rgime. If imperialism was in one sense a levelling and democratic system, in another sense it was intensely aristocratic, or rather timocratic. Superiorities of birth, race, age, and sex were everywhere tending to disappear, only that they might be replaced by the more ignoble superiorities of brute-force, of court-favour, and of wealth. The Palace set an example of caprice on the one side and of servility on the other which was faithfully followed through all grades of Roman society, less from a spirit of imitation than because circumstances were at work which made every rich man or woman the centre of a petty court consisting of voluntary dependents whose obsequiousness was rewarded by daily doles of food and money, by the occasional gift of a toga or even of a small farm, or by the hope of a handsome legacy. Before daybreak the doors of a wealthy house were surrounded by a motley crowd, including not only famished clients but praetors, tribunes, opulent freedmen, and even ladies in their litters; all come nominally for the purpose of paying their respects to the master, but in reality to receive a small present of money. At a later hour, when the great man went abroad, he was attended by a troop of poor hangers-on, who, after trudging about for hours in his train and accompanying him home in the afternoon, often missed the place at his table which their assiduities were intended to secure. Even when it came, the invitation brought small comfort, as only the poorest food and the worst wine were set before the client, while he had the additional vexation of seeing his patron feasting on the choicest dishes and the most delicious vintages; and this was also the lot of the domestic philosopher whom some rich men regarded as an indispensable member of their retinue.326 Of course those who wished for a larger share of the patrons favours could only hope to win it by unstinted tokens of admiration, deference, or assent; and213 probably many besides the master of thirty legions in the well-known story were invariably allowed to be right by the scholars with whom they condescended to dispute.
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THREE:"Ah, there comes Mister Tijd, and heWe must also observe that the parallel drawn by Sir A. Grant between the theology of Aristotle and that of John Stuart Mill is singularly unfortunate. It is in the first place incorrect to say that Mill represented God as benevolent but352 not omnipotent. He only suggested the idea as less inconsistent with facts than other forms of theism.250 In the next place, Aristotles God was almost exactly the reverse of this. He possesses infinite power, but no benevolence at all. He has nothing to do with the internal arrangements of the world, either as creator or as providence. He is, in fact, an egoist of the most transcendent kind, who does nothing but think about himself and his own perfections. Nothing could be more characteristic of the unpractical Aristotelian philosophy; nothing more repugnant to the eager English reformer, the pupil of Bentham and of Plato. And, thirdly, Sir A. Grant takes what is not the God of Aristotles system at all, but a mere abstraction, the immanent reason of Nature, the Form which can never quite conquer Matter, and places it on the same line with a God who, however hypothetical, is nothing if not a person distinct from the world; while, as if to bewilder the unfortunate English reader still further, he adds, in the very next sentence, that the great defect in Aristotles conception of God is the denial that God can be a moral Being.251
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THREE:Lalage entered gently. He stood in the pitchy darkness for some time. He could not hear a sound. Presently his patience was rewarded. There was the click of a key in the door and something swished by him.
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THREE:"I am afraid I should have shared his opinion under similar circumstances," said Bruce. "You see my guilt----"
THREE:
THREE:Here we imagine an impatient reader exclaiming, How can Mr. Herbert Spencer, who knows, if possible, even less of Greek philosophy than of his own Unknowable, have derived that principle from the Greeks? Well, we have already traced the genealogy by which the two systems of agnosticism are connected. And some additional light will be thrown on the question if we consider that the form of Neo-Platonism was largely determined by the manner in which Plotinus brought the spiritualistic conceptualism of Plato and Aristotle into contact with the dynamic materialism of the Stoics; and that the form of Mr. Spencers philosophy has been similarly determined by bringing the idealism of modern German thought into contact with the mechanical evolutionism of modern science. Thus, under the influence of old associations, has pantheism been metamorphosed into a crude agnosticism, which faithfully reproduces the likeness of its original ancestors, the Plotinian Matter and the Plotinian One.
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THREE:As a last illustration of the extent to which authority and subordination were pushed in Roman society, it may be mentioned that the better class of slaves were permitted to keep slaves for their own service. But whether the institution of slavery as a whole should be reckoned among the conditions favourable to authoritative beliefs is doubtful, as it was an element common to every period of antiquity. Perhaps, however paradoxical such an assertion may seem, the very frequency of emancipation gave increased strength to the feeling of dependence on an overruling personal power. A freedman could not forget that the most important event in his life was due, not to any natural law, but to the will or the caprice of a master; and this reflection must have confirmed his faith in the divine beings of whom he and his master were fellow-slaves.