Further, if it is not possible to affirm anything
truly, this itself will be false-the assertion that there is no true
affirmation. But if a true affirmation exists, this appears to
refute what is said by those who raise such objections and utterly
destroy rational discourse.
6
The saying of Protagoras is like the views we have mentioned; he
said that man is the measure of all things, meaning simply that that
which seems to each man also assuredly is. If this is so, it follows
that the same thing both is and is not, and is bad and good, and
that the contents of all other opposite statements are true, because
often a particular thing appears beautiful to some and the contrary of
beautiful to others, and that which appears to each man is the
measure. This difficulty may be solved by considering the source of
this opinion. It seems to have arisen in some cases from the
doctrine of the natural philosophers, and in others from the fact that
all men have not the same views about the same things, but a
particular thing appears pleasant to some and the contrary of pleasant
to others.
That nothing comes to be out of that which is not, but
everything out of that which is, is a dogma common to nearly all the
natural philosophers. Since, then, white cannot come to be if the
perfectly white and in no respect not-white existed before, that which
becomes white must come from that which is not white; so that it
must come to be out of that which is not (so they argue), unless the
same thing was at the beginning white and not-white.
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