Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/246

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THE SOPHISTS.
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dwells certainly in man: so that man is now set up as superior to nature. It is rather for nature to pay homage to him, than for him to pay homage to nature. In a word, instead of the universe being the measure of man, that is to say, instead of the universe imposing its forms and modes upon man, man is the measure of the universe, and imposes his forms and modes upon it. Such is the deduction of the Sophistical dogma in so far as it may be traced to Anaxagoras. His doctrine, that mind was the supreme principle, that there was nothing higher, was converted by an easy transition into the maxim that man, the mind of man, is the measure of all things; that is, the mind of man shapes and determines the truth.

10. Secondly; The new doctrine in regard to perception, either advanced by Leucippus and Democritus, or deducible from their speculations, afforded strong support to the fundamental principle of the Sophists. Heretofore it had been thought that the secondary qualities of matter, such as heat, cold, bitter, sweet, sound, and colour, possessed an objective existence in things, that they had a reality in themselves; now, it was declared and argued, on strong grounds of reason, that these qualities had no objective and independent existence, but that they depended entirely on the sentient mind of man. There was, in short, no such thing as heat or cold out of relation to feeling, no such thing as bitter or sweet out of relation to the sense of taste, no such thing as colour out of