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THEAET. Well then, Socrates, since you are so urgent it would be disgraceful for anyone not to exert himself in every way to say what he can. I think, then, that he who knows anything perceives that which he knows, and, as it appears at present, knowledge is nothing else than perception.
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SOC. Good! Excellent, my boy! That is the way one ought to speak out. But come now, let us examine your utterance together, and see whether it is a real offspring or a mere wind-egg. Perception, you say, is knowledge?
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THEAET. Yes.
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SOC. And, indeed, if I may venture to say so, it is not a bad description of knowledge that you have given, but one which Protagoras also used to give. Only, he has said the same thing in a different way. For he says somewhere that man is the measure of all things, of the existence of the things that are and the non-existence of the things that are not. You have read that, I suppose?
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THEAET. Yes, I have read it often.
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SOC. Well, is not this about what he means, that individual things are for me such as they appear to me, and for you in turn such as they appear to you —you and I being man?
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THEAET. Yes, that is what he says.
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SOC. It is likely that a wise man is not talking nonsense; so let us follow after him. Is it not true that sometimes, when the same wind blows, one of us feels cold, and the other does not? or one feels slightly and the other exceedingly cold?
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THEAET. Certainly.
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SOC. Then in that case, shall we say that the wind is in itself cold or not cold or shall we accept Protagoras’s saying that it is cold for him who feels cold and not for him who does not?
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THEAET. Apparently we shall accept that.
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SOC. Then it also seems cold, or not, to each of the two?
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THEAET. Yes.
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SOC. But seems denotes perceiving?
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THEAET. It does.
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SOC. Then seeming and perception are the same thing in matters of warmth and everything of that sort. For as each person perceives things, such they are to each person.
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THEAET. Apparently.