1884.] 
323 
Hylo-Idealism t 
He doubted the existence of the Gods* Yet he must have 
believed in the Gods, or why would he be content to take 
such remuneration for his teaching as his pupil was 
willing to pay, only requiring him to go into a temple and 
make oath that it was his sincere belief that the sum was 
sufficient ( vide Grote’s “ History of Greece,” vol. vii., p. 45 ). 
Grote, speaking of this philosopher, says — “ He taught 
that man is the measure of all things, both of that which 
exists and of that which does not exist — a dodtrine canvassed 
and controverted by Plato, who represents that Protagoras 
assumed knowledge to consist in sensation, and considered 
the sensations of each individual man to be, to him, the 
canon and measure of truth.” 
The only author I have met with who seems inclined to 
defend Protagoras is Grote, but he was the general defender 
of the Sophists. He says — “ In so far as we can understand 
the theory, it certainly was no more incorredt than several 
others then afloat from the Eleatic school and other philo- 
sophers, whilst it had the merit of bringing into forcible 
relief the essentially relative nature of cognition, — relative 
not indeed to the sensitive faculty, but to that reinforced 
and guided by the other faculties of man, memorial and 
ratiocinative ; and had it been more incorredt than it really 
is, there would be no warrant for those imputations which 
modern authors build upon it against the morality of Prota- 
goras. No such imputations are countenanced in the dis- 
cussion which Plato devotes to the dodtrine : indeed if the 
vindication he sets forth against himself, on behalf of Pro- 
tagoras, be really ascribable to that Sophist, it would give 
an exaggerated importance to the distindtion between good 
and evil, into which the distindtion between truth and false- 
hood is considered by the Platonic Protagoras as resolvable. 
The subsequent theories of Plato and Aristotle respedting 
cognition were much more systematic and elaborate, the 
work of men greatly superior in speculative genius to Pro- 
tagoras ; but they would not have been what they were had 
not Protagoras, as well as others, gone before them with 
suggestions more partial and imperfedt.” — (Id., vol. vii., 
pp. 5°> 5 1 )- Aristotle, discussing the dodtrine of Protagoras, 
says “that this dodtrine comes to no more than saying that 
man, so far as he is cognizant or so far as precipient, is the 
measure of all things ; in other words, that knowledge or 
* “ Respedting the Gods I neither know whether they exist nor what are 
their attributes ; the uncertainty of the subjedt, the shortness of human life, 
and many other causes debar me from this knowledge.” — Grote’s History of 
Greece, vol. vii., p. 48. 
