or kept them reasonably virtuous. Despite their discovery of the secular origin or geographical mutability of morals, their colonial derivation may have led them to underestimate the value of custom as a peaceful substitute for force or law in maintaining morality and order.
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To define morality or human worth in terms of knowledge, as Protagoras did a generation before Socrates, was a heady stimulus to thought but an unsteadying blow to character.
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The emphasis on knowledge raised the educational level of the Greeks, but it did not develop intelligence as rapidly as it liberated intellect.
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The announcement of the relativity of knowledge did not make men modest, as it should, but disposed every man to consider himself the measure of all things.
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Every clever youth could now feel himself fit to sit in judgment upon the moral code of his people; reject it, if he could not understand and approve it; and then be free to rationalize his desires as the virtues of an emancipated soul." -- will durant, the life of greece
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