opriate object come together, and give birth to
whiteness and the sensation of whiteness; the eye is filled with seeing,
and becomes not sight but a seeing eye, and the object is filled with
whiteness, and becomes not whiteness but white; and no other compound of
either with another would have produced the same effect. All sensation
is to be resolved into a similar combination of an agent and patient.
Of either, taken separately, no idea can be formed; and the agent may
become a patient, and the patient an agent. Hence there arises a general
reflection that nothing is, but all things become; no name can detain or
fix them. Are not these speculations charming, Theaetetus, and very good
for a person in your interesting situation? I am offering you specimens
of other men's wisdom, because I have no wisdom of my own, and I want
to deliver you of something; and presently we will see whether you
have brought forth wind or not. Tell me, then, what do you think of the
notion that "All things are becoming"?'

'When I hear your arguments, I am marvellously ready to assent.'

'But I ought not to conceal from you that there is a serious objection
which may be urged against this doctrine of Protagoras. For there are
states, such as madness and dreaming, in which perception is false; and
half our life is spent in dreaming; and who can say that at this instant
we are not dreaming? Even the fancies of madmen are real at the time.
But if knowledge is perception, how can we distinguish between the true
and the false in such cases? Having stated the objection, I will now
state the answer. Protagoras would deny the continuity of phenomena;
he would say that what is different is entirely different, and whether
active or passive has a different power. There are infinite agents and
patients in the world, and these produce in every combination of them a
different perception. Take myself as an instance:--Socrates may be ill
or he may be well,--and remember that Socrates, with all his accidents,
is spoken of. The wine which I drink when I am well is pleasant to
me, but the same wine is unpleasant to me when I am ill. And there
is nothing else from which I can receive the same impression, nor can
another receive the same impression from the wine. Neither can I and the
object of sense become separately what we become together. For the one
in becoming is relative to the other, but they have no other relation;
and the combination of them is absolute