of rhetoric and the new science of interrogation and
argument; also of the irony of Socrates and the self-assertion of the
Sophists. There is quite as much truth on the side of Protagoras as
of Socrates; but the truth of Protagoras is based on common sense and
common maxims of morality, while that of Socrates is paradoxical
or transcendental, and though full of meaning and insight, hardly
intelligible to the rest of mankind. Here as elsewhere is the usual
contrast between the Sophists representing average public opinion and
Socrates seeking for increased clearness and unity of ideas. But to a
great extent Protagoras has the best of the argument and represents the
better mind of man.

For example: (1) one of the noblest statements to be found in antiquity
about the preventive nature of punishment is put into his mouth; (2) he
is clearly right also in maintaining that virtue can be taught (which
Socrates himself, at the end of the Dialogue, is disposed to concede);
and also (3) in his explanation of the phenomenon that good fathers have
bad sons; (4) he is right also in observing that the virtues are not
like the arts, gifts or attainments of special individuals, but the
common property of all: this, which in all ages has been the strength
and weakness of ethics and politics, is deeply seated in human nature;
(5) there is a sort of half-truth in the notion that all civilized men
are teachers of virtue; and more than a half-truth (6) in ascribing
to man, who in his outward conditions is more helpless than the other
animals, the power of self-improvement; (7) the religious allegory
should be noticed, in which the arts are said to be given by Prometheus
(who stole them), whereas justice and reverence and the political
virtues could only be imparted by Zeus; (8) in the latter part of the
Dialogue, when Socrates is arguing that 'pleasure is the only good,'
Protagoras deems it more in accordance with his character to maintain
that 'some pleasures only are good;' and admits that 'he, above all
other men, is bound to say "that wisdom and knowledge are the highest of
human things."'

There is no reason to suppose that in all this Plato is depicting an
imaginary Protagoras; he seems to be showing us the teaching of the
Sophists under the milder aspect under which he once regarded them.
Nor is there any reason to doubt that Socrates is equally an historical
character, paradoxical, ironical, tiresome, but seeking for the unity
of v