Note 8 — Chapter XXXII · PHILEBUS.

Plato, Philêbus, p. 21 A. δέξαι’ ἂν σύ, Πρώταρχε, ζῆν τὸν βίον ἅπαντα ἡδόμενος ἡδονὰς τὰς μεγίστας; 21 D-E: εἴ τις δέξαιτ’ ἂν αὖ ζῆν ἡμῶν, &c. 22 A: Πᾶς δήπου τοῦτόν γε αἱρήσεται πρότερον ἢ ἐκείνων ὁποτερονοῦν, καὶ πρὸς τούτοις γε οὐχ ὁ μέν, ὁ δ’ οὔ. 60 D: εἴ τις ἄνευ τούτων δέξαιτ’ ἄν, &c.

Here again in appealing to the individual choice and judgment, the Platonic Sokrates indirectly recognises what, in the Theætêtus and other dialogues, we have seen him formally rejecting and endeavouring to confute — the Protagorean canon or measure. Protarchus is the measure of truth or falsehood, of belief or disbelief, to Protarchus himself: every other man is so to himself. Sokrates may be a wiser man, in the estimation of the public, than Protarchus; and if Protarchus believes him to be such, that very belief may amount to an authority, determining Protarchus to accept or reject various opinions propounded by Sokrates: but the ultimate verdict must emanate from the bosom of the acceptor or rejector. I have already observed elsewhere, that a large part of the conversation which the Platonic dialogues put into the mouth of Sokrates, is addressed to individualities and specialties of the other interlocutors: that this very power of discriminating between one mind and another, forms the great superiority of dialectic colloquy as compared with written treatise or rhetorical discourse — both of which address the same terms to a multitude of hearers or readers differing among themselves, without possibility of separate adaptation to each. (See above, ch. xxvi. pp. 50-54, on Phædrus.)