all knowledge is relative.

It was against the Sophists that Plato's writings are directed. But we must admit that it is the Sophist attitude that comes closest to the view that most generally prevails today - that all knowledge is relative to the person seeking it. 

No man is in a position to call another mistaken. Not many people today believe, with Plato, in a 'form' of goodness, an absolute and ideal standard by reference to which we can determine universal, absolute, ethical values.

The Sophists, to most present day ways of thinking, were correct.

So when Japanese soldiers entered villages in Malaysia in the Second World War, and for sport threw babies and young children into the air, catching them as they fell on the end of their bayonets, 

they committed nothing that can be regarded as absolute wrong.

When two teenagers broke into the flat of a partly blind widow of 92, and beat and raped her, and gouged out one eye,

these actions were wrong merely according to the particular code of our own time.

Absolute certainty as to the wrongness of any act can never be laid down.

All values are merely relative.

Is this not so, dear reader, is this not so?

-- Riddall, J. G., "Of Big Fish and Little Fish", Jurisprudence.

I couldn't find the news about the 92-year-old widow, but finding these troubled me enough.

And, 


Riddall's book was published in 1999.

I weep as well.