Note 27 — Chapter XXVIII · THEÆTETUS.

Plato, Sophistes, pp. 247-248.

The view taken of this matter by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in the third chapter of the first Book of his System of Logic, is very instructive; see especially pp. 65-66 (ed. 4th).

Aristippus (one of the Sokratici viri, contemporary of Plato) and the Kyrenaic sect affirmed the doctrine — ὅτι μόνα τὰ πάθη καταληπτά. Aristokles refutes them by saying that there can be no πάθος without both Object and Subject — ποιοῦν and πάσχον. And he goes on to declare that these three are of necessary co-existence or consubstantiality. Ἀλλὰ μὴν ἀνάγκη γε τρία ταῦτα συνυφίστασθαι — τό τε πάθος αὐτό, καὶ τὸ ποιοῦν, καὶ τὸ πάσχον (ap. Eusebium, Præp. Ev. xiv. 19, 1).

I apprehend that Aristokles by these words does not really refute what Aristippus meant to affirm. Aristippus meant to affirm the Relative, and to decline affirming anything beyond; and in this Aristokles agrees, making the doctrine even more comprehensive by showing that Object as well as Subject are relative also; implicated both with each other and in the πάθος.