o me, and to you as
they appear to you.' But there remains still an ambiguity both in the
text and in the explanation, which has to be cleared up. Did Protagoras
merely mean to assert the relativity of knowledge to the human mind? Or
did he mean to deny that there is an objective standard of truth?

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 us to understand this; but no effort of reflection will enable
us to pass beyond the limits of our own faculties, or to imagine the
relation or adaptation of objects to the mind to be different from that
of which we have experience. There are certain laws of language and
logic to which we are compelled to conform, and to which our ideas
naturally adapt themselves; and we can no more get rid of them than we
can cease to be ourselves. The absolute and infinite, whether explained
as self-existence, or as the totality of human thought, or as the
Divine nature, if known to us at all, cannot escape from the category of
relation.

But because knowledge is subjective or relative to the mind, we are
not to suppose that we are therefore deprived of any of the tests or
criteria of truth. One man still remains wiser than another, a
more accurate observer and relater of facts, a truer measure of the
proportions of knowledge. The nature of testimony is not altered, nor
the verification of causes by prescribed methods less certain. Again,
the truth must often come to a man through others, according to the
measure of his capacity and education. But neither does this affect the
testimony, whether written or oral, which he knows by experience to
be trustworthy. He cannot escape from the laws of his own mind; and
he cannot escape from the further accident of being dependent