Bake

Featured on alibris.com
( 4.6/5.0 ★ | 382 downloads )
-- Click the link to download --

https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=*C/UgjGtUZ8&offerid=1494105.26
539780007259700&type=15&murl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.alibris.com%2Fsearch%2
Fbooks%2Fisbn%2F9780007259700
Bake

ISBN: 9780007259700
Category: Media > Books
File Fomat: PDF, EPUB, DOC...
File Details: 16.4 MB
Language: English
Website: alibris.com
Short description: Good condition book with a firm cover and clean
readable pages. Shows normal use including some light wear or limited
notes highlighting yet remains a dependable copy overall. Supplemental
items like CDs or access codes may not be included.

DOWNLOAD: https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=*C/UgjGtUZ8&
offerid=1494105.26539780007259700&type=15&murl=http%3A%2F%2F
www.alibris.com%2Fsearch%2Fbooks%2Fisbn%2F9780007259700
 Bake

• Click the link: https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=*C/UgjGtUZ8&offerid=1494105.2653978000725970

• Don’t miss the chance to explore our extensive collection of high-quality resources, books, and guides on
our website. Visit us regularly to stay updated with new titles and gain access to even more valuable
materials.
.
 there can be no relation between different ideas; above all,
that falsehood cannot be disproved, for that to deny existence, while
naming existence, involves a contradiction in terms,— these are in
substance the very theories which Plato here undertakes to modify.
Now in accounting for these aberrations of thought, to say that the
Organon did not yet exist, is to state what, though true and
important to remember, does not afford a sufficient explanation—
aAndés pév, od0ev b& cadés. It is true that in the shape in which
they then appeared, they could have no strength now. But their
strength then Jay in a mode of thought, which prevailed very
extensively in that age, and which had exercised a more powerful
influence over Plato himself than any other except that of Socrates;
a mode of thought derived in great part unconsciously from the
philosophy of Parmenides and the dialectic of Zeno: the same which
appears in such assumptions (familiar to the student of the
Thezetetus) as that Socrates ill is a different man from Socrates well
(Thext.159 b), and that everything must be either known or not
known by the mind (Ib. 188 a). This may be described as the
tendency to view every subject in the light of abstract alternatives:
to apply the language of logic immediately to the sensible world: to
reject as matter of fact that which cannot at once be formulated as
an idea. This “disease,” as we can imagine him to have called it,
Plato here traces to its origin in the teaching of Parmenides, and
thus redeems the promise made by Socrates in the Theztetus, there
not fulfilled, to examine the deep wisdom of this man: the greatest
of those who uphold the indissoluble unity of Being. (Thext. 183 e.)
In doing so, he not only confutes others who had pushed the
tendency in question to an extreme, (he rather uses them as a
beacon to indicate where the truth does not lie,) but, what is of
more importance, develops further, or at least defines more clearly,
his own central point of view. For he also had yielded to the charm
of “ the Eleatic Palamedes” and had held Parmenides “in reverence
and awe:” nor had the dominance of this idea been merely logical,
but had amounted to a speculative conviction, may we not even say,
a theological belief? We cannot tell whether this impression had at
all been derived from Socrates, whom he has represented as
meeting
 TO THE SOPHIST. Ixi with the philosopher in early youth.
Socrates may have spoken of Parmenides, as he did of Heraclitus,
though his own work in philosophy was independent of all influence
from without. At all events it is quite possible that even during the
time of his converse with Socrates, Plato may have been attracted
towards the Eleatic School. His master’s influence was unobtrusive,
not hindering the accretion of ideas from all sides, and only after his
death would be found to “ comprehend all other.” It was probably at
a still earlier time that Plato’s interest and curiosity was excited by
the fine discourses and immense popularity of Protagoras and
Gorgias; and it is certain, on the authority of Aristotle, that his first
deep draught of philosophy had been received from Cratylus, who
taught him the Heraclitean doctrine that “all was motion.” This
theory, as then held by the enthusiasts of Ephesus, whom Plato has
satirized, was the secondary and less noble phase of a great thought
—that all which abides eternally is a universal ever-active Law of
Becoming. Heraclitus was no materialist. ** Matter” had no
existence for him, and he denied the separate existence of all “
Form” except the Highest Law, whose Permanence is Perpetual
Energy. In the hands of his followers, however, the assertion of this
universal law seems to have degenerated into a mere doctrine of the
relativity of particular being. And here the Eastern theorists were
met by Zeno, who in support of the Eleatic faith in One Solé Being,
proved that all relative existence was self-contradictory and
inconceiyable by Reason. Time and Motion, into which the sensible
universe had already been resolved, were themselves annihilated.
The movement of the intellect, by which this defensive negative
process was effected, was the first conscious dialectic, the germ of
much in Plato and of more in Aristotle, and, in conjunction with the
Socratic Elenchus, the direct parent of the method which in this
dialogue, and somewhat differently in the Parmenides, is turned
against the hypothesis of the simple absoluteness of Being™. But
however important logically, the philosophy of Zeno, like that of
Cratylus, while more definite, was also narrower than that of his
master. He had ™ The Zenonian method is “ parri- éorw: «i wal
torw, dxatddnwroy avcidally” turned against the Eleatic O@pdéry" «i
xal katadnwréy, dvepyhvevtov doctrine in the thesis of Gorgias:
obdév kal ddietfyynrov Tots réAas. ——
 Ixii INTRODUCTION descended from metaphysics to logic,
and in endeavouring to hold the Absolute against all comers had
assumed an attitude which was purely negative, and had adopted a
method which, though of great significance, was merely abstract,
and not directly applicable to the solution of any real problem. Plato,
however, had “risen to the height of the great argument,” and had
felt, not only the dialectical might of Zeno, but the transcendental
sublimity of Parmenides. It is possible that he may have derived
some of his own most famous imagery from the opening lines of the
poem on the Nature of Things, where the philosophic impulse is
represented as a car drawn by swift steeds, and the philosopher as
the comrade of immortal charioteers. Be that as it may, a modern
reader can hardly imagine the effect which the impressive lines of
Parmenides must have produced on the mind of Plato, when already
convinced by Cratylus of the utter changeableness of “all that
seems.” Something analagous may have been experienced by
individual students of Spinoza, Kant, or Hegel; but philosophical
belief in modern times presents for the most part but a faint image
of the heaven of contemplation into which Plato must have been
carried away on hearing reiterated with the eloquence of energetic
faith, and proved as a necessary truth of Reason, the absolute
Existence of One Being, inseparable from thought, equable,
unchangeable, without beginning and without end, with no past or
future, but an everlasting Now; however apparently discrete, yet
really continuous or omnipresent, so that differences of space are
done away as completely as differences of time; whence
phenomenal distinctions of all kinds, relation, change, beginning,
ending, time, space, motion, are thrust out of sight or are seen to
vanish away. This intellectual movement, by which we suppose Plato
to have been affected, was confirmed, but also gradually modified,
by his contemplation of the work of Socrates. In reflecting on the
manner and substance of that wonderful endless talk, and on the
ruling motive of that unswerving life, he saw the elements of all
previous speculation brought into antagonism and yet into
immediate relation with the common thoughts and common life of
men,—to whose mental and political state the _ issue of that
antagonism had given a deep and bitter interest. a si i > a
 ete + 524. 30 aie 8 ad Sage Sere TO THE SOPHIST. xiii
Before the cross-questioning of Socrates, which brought men to
know the vanity of their own knowledge, the most fixed opinions
were seen first to waver, and then to disappear. This Plato associated
with the changeableness of phenomena according to Heraclitus;
which viewed subjectively becomes the relativeness of sense,
according to the doctrines of Protagoras and Aristippus: a
relativeness which at the touch of negative dialectic, such as that of
Zeno, is reduced to nothingness. But the result of the method of
Socrates was not merely negative. His aim was to define, that is, to
lay bare the one conception which belongs universally and
unalterably to each subject of inquiry. In such a conception, if it
were found, his mind would gladly rest. This is well expressed by
Aristotle, who says that Socrates was the first who checked the
aimless career of thought, and fixed the mind on Definition: apérov
mept dpiopods emorjoavtos tiv didvorav. Now there is here implied a
new and independent assertion of the Absolute; for the endeavour
of Socrates had no meaning, if the “ Knowledge” which he sought
were less than the knowledge of that which is always and
everywhere true; if the ignorance of which he accused himself and
convinced others, were ignorance only of the relative, the transient,
or the phenomenal. But this Absolute of Socrates differs from that of
Parmenides in two important respects. 1. The Substance or Reality
of which he speaks is not asserted as if known, but sought for as still
unknown. The Existence of Being, which Parmenides asserted with
so much vehemence, is taken for granted, and the mind is called
away from the absorbing contemplation of this truth to the
consideration of a new problem, which may be thus stated generally:
“ What is Being? or What is the form of Being?” The change of
mental attitude expressed in these few words,—from asserting “‘
Being is” to asking “ What is Being?” is of the highest importance;
for without the consciousness which is here evolved, that knowledge
is a synthesis of a less general with a more general notion, the
growth of science would have been arrested. Philosophers would
have been contented with either assigning universality to some
particular thing, or, like the Eleatics, excluding the particular from
cognition. 2. Further, he did not ask the question in this merely
 t ” Ixiv INTRODUCTION abstract form: he implied an
absolute standard of truth and good; but, as the word “good”
reminds us, his inquiries had an immediate bearing on the life of
men. Hence, instead of attempting at once to solve the problem, “
What is Being?” he sought to determine “ What is righteous, what is
unrighteous, what is a state, what is the true statesman, what is
government, what is it to be fit to govern?’ The solution of these
problems was approached by what Bacon would have called a
process of exclusions, through a series of hypotheses, which were
successively modified or relinquished when in some case not found
to apply to the subject of definition. And while things commonly
confused were thus distinguished, things commonly distinguished (e.
g. folly and madness) were not less unexpectedly combined. 3. The
personal attributes of Socrates enhanced this union of the universal
with the particular, and of the abstract with the concrete, in his
method of talk. The eye that was fixed on the unchangeableness of
truth and right, was the same which pierced through and through
the follies of his contemporaries ; the lofty soul had a cynical
exterior, the widest generalizations were hidden beneath the
meanest instances, the imperturbable, urbane, ironical demeanour,
helped to bring the dry light of reason into continual, immediate
contact with the infinite anomalies of opinion and action; the strange
being, unlike all other men, had a direct, unmistakeable influence on
almost all. By contrast with him the hollowness of all pretence,
especially in other teachers, was clearly seen, while his example
gave the appearance of meanness to those who taught for pay. Yet
he was the first to admit their individual excellences and
accomplishments; while in conversation with him their real
characteristics, their strength as well as their weakness, were most
truly manifested. Thus with Socrates began a philosophic movement
which in some elements was kindred to the Eleatic, but radically.
different in others ;—kindred, because vindicating by the refutation
of falsehood an ideal truth; different, because inductive in method,
and practical as well as speculative in ultimate aim —identifying
truth with good. But in continuing and interpreting this movement,
Plato at first dwelt consciously rather on the former than the latter
 a rer “: ais) TO THE SOPHIST. Ixv aspect of Socratic
thought; rather on the absolute contrast between the actual state of
human opinion and the ideal of Knowledge, than on the nature of
Knowledge as implying a relation of the mind to “ Being,” or of the
Universal to the Particular. This, as may be gathered indirectly from
this dialogue, was partly due to the prevalence of the Eleatic impulse
—the conviction, namely, of the incommunicable perfection of |
abstract Being, the sole object of Knowledge or true thought: | but
partly also to the general law by which belief always precedes
criticism. The problem of the post-Socratic philo- — i sophy for those
who did not hold with Antisthenes that Defi- | nition was merely
nominal, was, granting the possibility of Knowledge and the
existence of general forms, 1. What is | Knowledge? 2. What are the
ely? And, from the objective character of the Greek philosophy, the
first of these two ques- iw tions was chiefly, although not wholly,
studied in the light of a the second. In other words, the effort of
Socrates was to find " the eidos of man, justice, temperance, &c.;
that of his followers was to find the nature of the éldos generally.
But, just as the a Existence of Being was asserted, before any one
thought of asking, What is Being? so, in entering on this new stage
of thought, Plato believes in Knowledge and the Ideas before he
examines them, and his dialectic is for a time coloured with a haze
of imagination. He is at first contented with declaring that
Knowledge is the only real ground of virtue, and that accordingly all
virtue is essentially one. Presently a question rises about the Origin
of Knowledge—How can Knowledge have a beginning? For how can
a man inquire into what he does not know? How are we to conceive
the transition from ' ignorance to certainty? This question is
answered, as Plato elsewhere answers questions which are not ripe
for solution, mythically. We learn by recollection, as appears from
the lessons of geometry where the teacher leads the pupil to draw
forth from his own mind what the moment previously he did not
know. Thus the “ Eristic” objection is removed, that a man cannot
inquire about either what he knows or what he does not know: and
the anticipation of poetry and prophecy, that we are immortal
beings, is confirmed. To learn is to awaken slumbering knowledge.
‘The Soul has been everywhere and has seen all things, and
therefore must have known a
 ee a / ’ a ¥ . levi INTRODUCTION all things before coming
hither: and if she can recover one thing only, there is hope that she
may by courageous efforts regain the rest.” (Men. 81 ¢.) By this
hypothesis the true objects of knowledge are relegated to another
world than this and to a previous life. The objects of sense remind
us of them through a process of association. (Phedo.) These Eternal
Forms the Soul beheld in her first flight, ere she lost her wings,
when the impulse of the higher love carried her amongst immortal
chariots, beyond the visible sphere, into the plain of truth, where
Beauty, Justice, Temperance, Wisdom, dwell eternally, not as they
are imagined but as they are known. (Pheedr.) This is the poetical
mode of conceiving of the ideas, in which Plato embodied the
feelings of wonder and delight with which he contemplated the first
real inquiry which the world had seen. The object and end of that
inquiry appeared to him surrounded with a mystic halo,—like his own
image of Beauty, lightening from a transcendent height,—
annihilating and making worthless the shadows which surround us
here. But Plato was far from resting in this as a final theory of
Knowledge. His belief in immortality and: pre-existence remained, it
is true; but did not supersede other inquiries concerning the ideas,
which were wholly independent of such a theory, and proceeded
simply by experience and reflection. Thus in the Republic, the vision
of the ideas in their purity, without help from sense, is the goal
towards which the mind is allowed to climb up the ladder of
hypotheses, and although we hear of an intellectual region, the
context shews this language to be metaphorical, rather than
mythological as in the Pheedrus and Phedon. The line is still drawn
sharply and broadly between Being as the object of knowledge and
Not-Being as the object of ignorance ; but, first, an intermediate
state, having for object the changeable, which is and is not, is
crudely imagined, and, at a later period of the discussion (bk. vii.),
the successive steps by which the mind rises from the lowest
ignorance to the highest knowledge are supplied. No mention is
made of recollection, unless we count as such the mythical account
of Lethe in bk. x. ; and immediately after the allegory of the cave, in
which the sensible has been represented as the copy of the ideal
world, we have a piece of psychological analysis, in which
 TO THE SOPHIST. Ixvii the idea is spoken of as the
universal element evolved by Reason from the impressions of Sense.
“ Intelligence is called in to determine between the contrarieties of
sense. I see two fingers, one large the other small. Sight gives me
opposite impressions respecting objects which are alike. But sight
cannot answer the questions which the mind cannot but ask
hereupon. Is this puzzling impression one, or two? If two, then each
is one, and so on. Thus intelligence distinguishes between great and
small, which in the sensation of vision were confused. And then only
are we induced to ask the question which reason suggests, ‘What is
the nature of greatness and smallness?” The ideas thus
distinguished are objects of Reason, the former confused impression
was received through sight.” (vil. 524.) Such a relation between
intelligence and sensation is acknowledged even in the Phzdrus, in
the midst of the mythical description of the Plain of Truth: Ac? yap
dvOpwroy ovviévar kar’ eldos Aeydpevov, ex TodAAGY lov aicOijcewn
els ev oyopa fvvatpodpevov: though it is immediately added, “ Now
this is recollection of what the mind has seen in a previous state.” In
both these passages the mind is seen to approach the «ld through
reflection on the experience of sense. The same notion is still more
clearly expressed in the Thesetetus (184, 5): “We speak commonly
of seeing with the eye, hearing with the ear, and so forth: but in
truth it is with the mind that we see and hear, and feel and taste,
and smell. The mind receives these particular impressions through
the organs of the different senses. (Cf. Phileb. 33 c.) But there are
some things which the mind perceives without any such corporeal
aid. These are not particular but universal. For instance, the mind
receives through touch an impression of softness from a soft thing,
of hardness from a hard thing. But when the mind says this 7s hard,
a new element arises, viz. the Being of the hardness, which is
perceived, not through any of the senses, but by the mind alone,
and the Idea of hardness is then first perceived. Further, that
hardness and softness are opposed and that the opposition between
them is real, these and the like thoughts the mind herself
determines, when she reviews and compares the impressions which
she has received through the senses.” q The idea, then, in this,
which may be termed the psychological k 2 — —
 aspect, is that unity which the mind seeks amidst the
variety of sensible impressions, distinguishing what is confused in
sense, and uniting scattered phenomena in one conception: the
universal element, which is latent in the mind's first impression of
each object, and is disengaged by reflection to be contemplated by
reason. The right performance of this process is the secret of
method: “to unite and divide in thought according to natural forms,
that is, according to the reality of things, not mangling the victims
like a bad sacrificer.” (Phaedr. 265 e.) It is in connection with this
logical or dialectical process that the word cidos is most frequently
used by Plato. The ideas are now seen as objects of intelligence,
which remain unchanged, while the sensations through which the
mind is awakened to perceive them are perpetually giving place to
new and perhaps opposite impressions. (See Cratyl. 440.) Each is
separated from the phenomena through which it was at first
recognized, in an isolation like that of the Eleatic Being, as the
absolute in which the relative is done away: the dvu7d0etov,
independent of external support; the universal absorbing the
particular. But here several difficulties arise. 1. How is the
absoluteness of Knowledge reconcileable with the possibility of
error? For if everything is either known or unknown, how can that
which is unknown be in any way the object of belief? Hence the
hypothesis in Rep. bk. v. of “ that which is and is not” as the object
of opinion, and the elaborate azopia of the Thestetus, where it is
attempted to account for error by imagining thought as a process
between sensation and memory, or between memory and memory. A
nearly parallel difficulty is put in the Parmenides. If there is no
relation between the perfect and the imperfect, man cannot know
the ideas, nor can the divine mind be cognizant of human thoughts.
2. How can the universal be absolute and yet embrace particulars?
This or a cognate difficulty is raised in the Thextetus, where it is
found impossible to distinguish the whole from the sum of the parts:
the same dzop(a is explicitly stated in the Philebus, where it is
asked, how can One exist in many and yet be One?—and in the
Parmenides, through the illus‘tration of the sail, which covers many
men, but covers each only by a part of itself. The notion of »€0e£s,
which Socrates cd ie DORN 2 ow elm. fe deme te (ie ee ee ; te, UID
Saedue : : ; : Me ot ts Axviii INTRODUCTION 2
 TO THE SOPHIST. Ixix introduces in the Parmenides, only
creates new difficulties, but something approaching a rational
solution appears in the Philebus, where Number is seen to mediate
between Unity and Infinity. 3. Granting the existence of abstract
ideas of resemblance, difference, justice, beauty, good; shall we say
that the idea of man, or fire, or water, or, still more, of mud, dirt,
hair, exist absolutely"? (Parm.) 4. Must not ideas be related to one
another? For is not dialectic, and even language, a movement or
process between ideas? Nay, if the idea is the cause of phenomena,
must there not be a principle of life or movement inherent in each
idea? In the Republic, for example, the operations of science are
conceived as a movement along the chain of true ideas, a way
upwards and downwards which is the same. And at the head of this
nexus of ¢tdn is the form of Good, which in some way unexplained is
the cause of Being and of Knowledge. In the Philebus also there is
imagined a process between the limit and the unlimited, the one and
the many, and a cause of this process is supposed. And in the
Timeus the Creator prepares for his work by welding together
opposite ideas. Thus the Sophist and Parmenides are not the sole
response in Plato to the challenge of Socrates, “I should admire any
man who could shew that Resemblance, Difference, Plurality, Unity,
Motion, Rest, admitted of composition and division (év éavrois tadra
duvdyeva ovyKepdvyvoba xa diaxplvecOa... Thy adrivy tavtny
amoplav év avrois tots eldeou mavtodamGs mAEKoperny ...
émdeigar. Parm. 129 e). 5. If the idea, as Socrates urges when
pressed by Parmenides (Ib. 132 b), is a conception of the mind, yet
that conception must have an object, and Knowledge is in some way
a process between subject and object, in which, if the mind is active,
the object of Knowledge must be conceived as passive. In this way
also the Eternal Form is brought back from the = When Plato makes
Parmenides remark on this, “Philosophy has not yet acquired her
final hold on you,” he is perhaps covertly satirizing the thoroughness
of the Megarian logic. © See Rep.6, 490 b. Mply abrot 6 forw
éxdorou Tijs pioews GyacOa rpoohKe Wxiis epdrrecba: rod Towbrov"
xpoahue Bt Evyyeve?” § wAnoidoas cal uryels 7@ bv bvtws, yervioas
vovvy kal 4AhOeray, yvoln Te Kal dAnOas Cn Kal rpéporro, kal ofr
Afyyot wBivos, ply 3 ob~ a —_— 
 1a INTRODUCTION fruitless isolation in which it has been
placed by the first efforts of purely abstract thought; and the
reflection rises that Perfect Being must include the attributes of
consciousness and life, and therefore, in a certain sense, of motion.
(Soph. 248.) The difficulties which attend the hypothesis of the ideas
are at least as clearly stated by Plato as by Aristotle: and his
statements have also the advantage of being directed against the
phase of the doctrine which he knew and to which he had been
himself inclined, and not to the confused Pythagorean fancies of his
followers. ‘he question is most clearly enunciated in the Thestetus
from the side of Knowledge, and in the Parmenides from the side of
Being. But those who remember the various fertility of Plato’s mind
will not expect the objections raised in different dialogues to be
precisely the same. He never sought to bind the play of thought in a
single formula. When it had once occurred to him to criticize the
theory of ideas, the problem was sure to be seen by him in changing
lights, although the elements of the question remain essentially
unaltered. Is each idea one or many, at rest or in motion, isolated or
related to others, limiting or limited; is Being inanimate or endowed
with life, exclusive of particulars, or how related to them? Is it
possible wholly to separate Knowledge from sense and opinion?
These, if not the same question, form a class of questions, of the
reality of which Plato is conscious in some dialogues, but appears
wholly unconscious in others (for instance in the Phedo and
Cratylus). The dialogues, besides the Sophist and Politicus, in which
the effect of this movement within Platonism in the mind of its
founder are most evident, are the Philebus, Timzeus, and Laws. In
the Philebus, not only is the difficulty stated at the outset, in the
form of the problem how to reconcile the antithesis between the one
and many, but the combination and resolution of ideas is elaborately
exemplified, and a Cause of their combination in reality is conceived.
The earlier part of the Timzus contains a similar passage, and in
both the author has laboured to imagine the mode in which the ideal
and corporeal are conjoined. Both anticipate Aristotle in speaking of
matter (azetpor, riOjvn), and of a cause by which form is impressed
on matter. The Philebus has also a graduated scale of Knowledges,
in which the knowledge of the particular and concrete,
 fe , TO THE SOPHIST. _ Ixxi although regarded as “impure,”
is deliberately allowed to have a place. And in the Laws, while the
eldn are not heard of except as logical forms, and a higher
movement (namely that of mind) is imagined as the cause both of
rest and motion (10, 895), Plato is vehement in asserting that mind
in all its manifestations is prior to the elements and controls them.
The object of the preceding remarks has been to shew (1) That side
by side with the poetical or metaphysical there grew up in Plato’s
mind a logical mode of conceiving the ideas; (2) That as he viewed
them in this two-fold aspect, and saw the latter of the two more
clearly, he became conscious of the difficulties which the theory
involved; and (3) That he was led, partly through the consideration
of these difficulties, to alter considerably his theory of Knowledge
and Being: passing from the bare assertion of an absolute object of
Mind, to which he had been led by interpreting Socrates through
Parmenides, towards the Aristotelian conception of logical categories
and of Being as composed of Matter and Form by an efficient Cause.
Turning now to the Sophist, from which we have been too long
detained, we find the elaborate treatment of a difficulty, which is
allowed to have been occasioned by the exclusiveness of the Eleatic
point of view. This difficulty is not, as in the Philebus, how to find a
meeting-point between unity and infinity, but one more abstract still,
how to explain the possibility of combining the positive and negative
in thought. Philosophy by aspiring to the pure form of Being had
become “ dark from excess of light;” had soared beyond the ken of
mortals — into an unseen heaven ; and in “ turning away her mind”
from that which is not—from the unreal, and therefore from
negation—had deprived herself of the only weapon which could be
of any avail to her against the spurious counterfeits of herself. She
must deny as well as affirm, and she cannot deny without giving a
certain place to Not-Being. It has been already said, that the
Negative is here viewed in its ultimate abstraction. The distinctions
of Aristotle, between weddos, orépnois, and . Sévapis or Kata
ovpBeBnxds, which he employed in criticizing Plato, are certainly not
thought of, but neither were they required, at least in the statement
of the question. For false~ hood is the object or correlative of denial,
and both are equally
 r ) ~ Yi : "tel INTRODUCTION expressed whenever the
word “ not” is uttered: and negation “per accidens” must obviously
be explained through the theory of simple negation. The question is,
does this word “not” imply such absolute severance between the
terms which it divides, as to exclude the possibility of any relation
between them? If A is exclusive of B, is B therefore incapable of all
communion or combination with A?’ If so, a counterfeit of reality is
inconceivable, for it is not reality, and yet partakes of reality in so far
as it is really a counterfeit. This question is raised not with respect to
individuals, or infime species, in which the coexistence of sameness
and difference was an admitted fact (Phil. 15 d), but with respect to
general ideas, and the most universal of these, beginning with the
most comprehensive of all ideas, viz. that of Being. The “absolute
severance,” which the injunction of Parmenides requires, between
that which Is, and that which Is Not, was the origin and type of the
spirit “ which would separate each thing from every other” (Soph.
259 e); and the correction of this deeply-rooted tendency was
necessary in order to make inquiry possible. After a statement of the
perplexities in which the notion of Not-Being is involved according to
the ordinary conception of it as the opposite of Being, shewing that
it is inconceivable either as a predicate or as a subject, or as the
object of refutation and denial; the Stranger expresses his intention,
in this desperate case, of attacking the revered authority of
Parmenides. This opens the whole question of the Nature of Being,
and the theories of previous and contemporary philosophers on the
subject. And in the course of the inquiry it is found that the notion of
Being, according to prevailing views, is no less full of contradictions
than that of Not-Being. Amongst the earlier thinkers, those who hold
a fixed plurality of Beings must admit that existence is common to all
these, and hence whatever number they assert must either be
increased, or reduced to one. Those who, with Parmenides, believe
in the Unity of Being, will find it hard to keep this unity inviolate
while they use the terms Being, One, Whole, each with a distinct
meaning, and while they admit, as they needs must, that a whole
has parts. These difficulties are only briefly indicated: the chief
criticism of Parmenides, or rather the modification of his view,
 TO THE SOPHIST. Ixxiii which has been promised above, is
made indirectly, and only emerges when the contemporary phase of
Greek philosophy has been examined in its two chief aspects. Here
no attempt is made to determine the exact number of Beings. The
battle rages about a different point. Is Being corporeal or ideal?
Some hold that nothing exists but bodies, which they can touch and
handle: their opponents break up these bodies by dialectic into a
flux of change, and assert the sole existence of certain bodiless
ideas. Now the former, if pressed, and if they were capable of
argument, would admit the existence of a soul, and of virtue and
vice as attributes of the soul; and, though they might contend that
the soul is corporeal, they could hardly maintain this of justice or
wisdom. Hence they may be willing to substitute for body as the
characteristic of Being, the power of acting or of being acted upon.
Being is possibility of energy. But the idealists will refuse this
definition. Acting and suffering they say are properties not of Being,
but of Becoming: for Being is exempt from change. Whereupon we
ask them whether to know is an active, and to be known a passive
verb; and whether Being therefore, so far as known, is not acted
upon? And here, apart from logic, the reflection rises, that Perfect
Being cannot be devoid of life and movement, and the power of
thought. That which has thought has life, that which has life has a
soul, and that which has a soul cannot be motionless. - And yet it is
most true that reason could not exist nor come into being without
uniformity and permanence, which imply a principle of rest in the
object of reason. Being therefore has both Motion and Rest. But
Being is neither Motion nor Rest. We are in the position of the
dualists whom we compelled to admit a third principle. Motion and
Rest are opposites, yet both exist. Being therefore comprehends
both, and is different from both, and though essentially partaking
both of motion and rest, in its own nature neither rests nor moves.
In solving this apparent contradiction, we stumble on the solution of
the original problem of the reconciliation of Being and Not-Being. As
we endeavour to harmonize the discords which have arisen within
the sphere of Being, we are led to modify our notion of the mutual
exclusiveness of Being and _ that which had been hitherto regarded
as the opposite of Being. l —
 Before proceeding with the argument, we may glance at
one or two points in the interesting passage which has just been
analyzed. (Soph. 246-250.) Under the titles of the Earth-born and
the Friends of Ideas does Plato allude to any particular schools, and,
if so, to which of those existing round him ? It is difficult to bring
either description into exact harmony with the tenets of any single
school. The ynyeveis would at first sight appear to be the same who
are mentioned in the Thestetus as “stubborn and repellent” men,
but are there emphatically, though somewhat ironically,
distinguished’ . from the “ disciples of Protagoras :” whereas here
the dA7jOea of Protagoras appears to be brought under the general
censure. It may be remarked, however, that there is a distinction
amongst the ynyeveis also, for some are viewed as more hopelessly
irreclaimable than the rest (of adrév onaproi te cal adrdx9oves).
According to this view, Antisthenes may possibly be included, but the
whole description and the line of argument pursued point rather in
the direction of a physical school. The moral maxims of Democritus,
when taken in connexion with his general principle, might lay his
followers open to the criticism here employed. But on the other
hand, his analysis of the senses makes it improbable that he is alone
intended. It remains, therefore, most probable that Plato has here
idealized, if such a paradox may be allowed, the materialistic
tendency in contemporary thought. In the other description, of the
friends of motionless forms, there are some marks which answer to
the Pythagoreans, and others which point rather in the direction of
Megara. That the Pythagoreans, whose dx(vyrot odoiat are very
similarly criticized by Aristotle, are intended here, is an opinion which
Proclus? takes for granted, and which has been recently advanced,
quite independently as it would seem, by a French critic, M. Mallet.
That the Megarians are meant, has been the common belief, since
this was somewhat doubtfully asserted by Schleiermacher. The
Pythagoreans certainly p Comment. in Parmen. p.149 ed. cogots, A
comparison of Parmenides, Pont.: jv uty yap Kal mapa rots Tlv-
Philolaus, and Empedocles shews that Baryopelois ) wept Trav cidav
Oewpia kal the Eleatic and Pythagorean speculaBnAot Kal adtds ev
Sopirrf trav elda@y tions were kindred in their origin. glrous
mpocayopetwy tods ev ‘IraAlg