pains, of things terrible and not terrible. Courage then is knowledge,
and cowardice is ignorance. And the five virtues, which
were originally maintained to have five different natures, after
having been easily reduced to two only, at last coalesce in one.
The assent of Protagoras to this last position is extracted with 361
great difficulty.
Socrates concludes by professing his disinterested love of the truth, and remarks on the singular manner in which he and his adversary had changed sides. Protagoras began by asserting, and Socrates by denying, the teachableness of virtue, and now the latter ends by affirming that virtue is knowledge, which is the most teachable of all things, while Protagoras has been striving to show that virtue is not knowledge, and this is almost equivalent to saying that virtue cannot be taught. He is not satisfied with the result, and would like to renew the enquiry with the help of Protagoras in a difierent order, asking (i) What virtue is, and (2) Whether virtue can be taught. Protagoras declines this offer, but commends Socrates' earnestness and his style of discussion.
The Protagoras is often supposed to be full of difficulties. These are partly imaginary and partly real. The imaginary ones are (i) Chronological,—which were pointed out in ancient times by Athenaeus (v. 59), and are noticed by Schleiermacher and others, and relate to the impossibility of all the persons in the Dialogue meeting at any one time, whether in the year 425
B.C., or in any other. But Plato, like all writers of fiction, aims only at the probable, and shows in many Dialogues (e.g. the
Symposium and
Republic, and already in the
Laches) an extreme disregard of the historical accuracy which is sometimes demanded of him. (a) The exact place of the Protagoras among the Dialogues, and the date of composition, have also been much disputed. But there are no criteria which afford any real grounds for determining the date of composition; and the affinities of the Dialogues, when they are not indicated by Plato himself, must always to a great extent remain uncertain. (3) There is another class of difficulties, which may be ascribed to preconceived notions of commentators, who imagine that Protagoras the Sophist ought always to be in the wrong, and his adversary Socrates in the right; or that in this or that passage—e.g. in the explanation of good as pleasure—