 Having clarified the meaning of “man”, we can now turn to consider the second part of the phrase, “of those that are, that they are; and of those that are not, that they are not”. Essentially, it is a matter of clarifying what “things” means and in what sense man “measures” them. Based on what has been noted so far, we can reasonably claim that what Protagoras meant by “things” was not just material objects and entities with their specific properties (things that can be perceived by the senses, such as wind): “things” are to be understood in their broadest possible sense as facts or events—e.g., the temperature of the wind, but also an event such as performing a certain action and all that happens to man. In this respect, the choice of the term is probably revealing. Chrema derives from the verb chraomai, meaning “to treat”, “to use”, “to entertain a relation with”: according to its original meaning, the term describes not so much “things” in themselves (in this case Protagoras could have used onta or pragmata), as in relation to us; the emphasis is on the way in which we relate to things, use them, judge them, and so on. As far as the notion of measure is concerned, it is clear that man is the measure not of the existence of these things and facts, but rather of the way in which they present themselves (e.g., warm/cold or good/bad). The verb “is” must be understood not in an existential sense (in which case it would be difficult to understand what it means for man to be the measure of the non-existence of the things that are not), but rather in a modal-predicative sense: Protagoras is not denying the existence of the external world, but only limiting the possibility of knowing it to the way in which it presents itself to our experience: hence, if I judge the wind to be warm, I am the measure of the fact that it is warm and not of the fact that it exists; and if I judge the wind not to be warm, I am measure of the fact that it is not warm and not of the fact that it does not exist (but this does not exclude some specific cases where I can also be the measure of existence or lack there of, for instance the Gods: interestingly, the opening sentence of fr. 4 on the Gods appears to have existential implications, see below  §4).  Things in themselves do not possess any predetermined truth or any intrinsic value: they simply exist, they are what surrounds man, what happens to him. But what matters is the way in which we relate to them: each individual, according to his or her experience, is the judge of these facts, insofar as he or she assigns them a degree of consistency or value.