| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: which destroy logic, 'Not only man, but each man, and each man at each
moment.' In the arguments about sight and memory there is a palpable
unfairness which is worthy of the great 'brainless brothers,' Euthydemus
and Dionysodorus, and may be compared with the egkekalummenos ('obvelatus')
of Eubulides. For he who sees with one eye only cannot be truly said both
to see and not to see; nor is memory, which is liable to forget, the
immediate knowledge to which Protagoras applies the term. Theodorus justly
charges Socrates with going beyond the truth; and Protagoras has equally
right on his side when he protests against Socrates arguing from the common
use of words, which 'the vulgar pervert in all manner of ways.'
III. The theory of Protagoras is connected by Aristotle as well as Plato
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: These two questions have not been always clearly distinguished; the
relativity of knowledge has been sometimes confounded with uncertainty.
The untutored mind is apt to suppose that objects exist independently of
the human faculties, because they really exist independently of the
faculties of any individual. In the same way, knowledge appears to be a
body of truths stored up in books, which when once ascertained are
independent of the discoverer. Further consideration shows us that these
truths are not really independent of the mind; there is an adaptation of
one to the other, of the eye to the object of sense, of the mind to the
conception. There would be no world, if there neither were nor ever had
been any one to perceive the world. A slight effort of reflection enables
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