Such is the exposition which Sokrates is here made to give, of the Protagorean doctrine. How far the arguments, urged by him in its behalf, are such as Protagoras himself either really urged, or would have adopted, we cannot say. In so far as the doctrine asserts essential fusion and implication between Subject and Object, with actual multiplicity of distinct Subjects--denying the reality either of absolute and separate Subject, or of absolute and separate Object[43]--I think it true and instructive. We are reminded that when we affirm any thing about an Object, there is always (either expressed or tacitly implied) a Subject or Subjects (one, many, or all), _to whom_ the Object _is_ what it is declared to be. This is the fundamental characteristic of consciousness, feeling, and cognition, in all their actual varieties. All of them are bi-polar or bi-lateral, admitting of being looked at either on the subjective or on the objective side. Comparisons and contrasts, gradually multiplied, between one consciousness and another, lead us to distinguish the one of these points of view from the other. In some cases, the objective view is brought into light and prominence, and the subjective thrown into the dark and put out of sight: in other cases, the converse operation takes place. Sometimes the Ego or Subject is prominent, sometimes the Mecum or Object.[44] Sometimes the Objective is as it were divorced from the Subject, and projected outwards, so as to have an illusory appearance of existing apart from and independently of any Subject. In other cases, the subjective view is so exclusively lighted up and conspicuous, that Object disappears, and we talk of a mind conceiving, as if it had no correlative Concept. It is possible, by abstraction, to indicate, to name, and to reason about, the one of these two points of view without including direct notice of the other: this is abstraction or logical separation--a mental process useful and largely applicable, yet often liable to be mistaken for real distinctness and duality. In the present case, the two abstractions become separately so familiar to the mind, that this supposed duality is conceived as the primordial and fundamental fact: the actual, bilateral, consciousness being represented as a temporary derivative state, generated by the copulation of two factors essentially independent of each other. Such a theory, however, while aiming at an impracticable result, amounts only to an inversion of the truth. It aims at explaining our consciousness as a whole; whereas all that we can really accomplish, is to explain, up to a certain point, the conditions of conjunction and sequence between different portions of our consciousness. It also puts the primordial in the place of the derivative, and transfers the derivative to the privilege of the primordial. It attempts to find a generation for what is really primordial--the total series of our manifold acts of consciousness, each of a bilateral character,