magnitude. At any rate, show me an example of it yourself, that I
may know better how to begin.--Parmenides at first declines, on
the ground of his old age: but Zeno and the others urge him, so
that he at length consents.--The process will be tedious (observes
Zeno); and I would not ask it from Parmenides unless among an
audience small and select as we are here. Before any numerous
audience, it would be an unseemly performance for a veteran like
him. For most people are not aware that, without such discursive
survey and travelling over the whole field, we cannot possibly
attain truth or acquire intelligence.[45]
[Footnote 45: Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 D. [Greek: ei) me\n ou)=n
plei/ous ê)=men, ou)k a)\n a)/xion ê)=n dei=sthai; _a)prepê= ga\r
ta\ toiau=ta pollô=n e)nanti/on le/gein_, a)/llôs te kai\
têlikou/tô|; a)gnoou=si ga\r oi( polloi\ o(/ti a)/neu tau/tês tê=s
dia\ pa/ntôn diexo/dou kai\ pla/nês, a)du/naton e)ntucho/nta tô=|
a)lêthei= nou=n schei=n.] Hobbes remarks (Computatio sive Logica,
i. 3, 12): "Learners ought to go through logical exercises
silently and by themselves: for it will be thought both ridiculous
and absurd, for a man to use such language publicly". Proklus
tells us, that the difficulty of the [Greek: gumnasi/a], here set
out by the Platonic Parmenides, is so prodigious, that no one
after Plato employed it. (Prok. ad Parmen. p. 801, Stallb.)]
[Side-note: Parmenides elects his own theory of the _Unum_, as the
topic for exhibition--Aristoteles becomes respondent.]
It is especially on this ground--the small number and select
character of the auditors--that Parmenides suffers himself to be
persuaded to undertake what he calls "amusing ourselves with a
laborious pastime".[46] He selects, as the subject of his
dialectical exhibition, his own doctrine respecting the One. He
proceeds to trace out the consequences which flow, first, from
assuming the affirmative thesis, _Unum Est_: next, from assuming
the negative thesis, or the Antithesis, _Unum non Est_. The
consequences are to be deduced from each hypothesis, not only as
regards _Unum_ itself, but as regards _Cætera_, or other things
besides _Unum_. The youngest man of the party, Aristoteles,
undertakes the duty of respondent.
[Footnote 46: Plato, Parmenid. p. 137 A. [Greek: dei= ga\r
chari/zesthai, _e)peidê\_ kai\ o(\ Zê/nôn le/gei, _au)toi/ e)smen_
. . . ê)\ bou/lesthe _e)peidê/per dokei= pragmateiô/dê paidia\n
pai/zein_,] &c.]
[Side-note: Exhibition of Parmenides--Nine distinct deductions or
Demonstrations, first from _Unum Est_--next from _Unum non Est_.]
The remaining portion of the dialogue, half of the whole, is
occupied with nine distinct deductions or demonstrations given by
Parmenides. The first five start from the assumption, _Unum Est_:
the last four from the assumption, _Unum non Est_. The three first
draw out the deductions from _Unum Est_, in reference to _Unum_:
the fourth and fifth draw out the consequences from the same
premiss, in reference to _Cætera_. Again, the sixth and seventh
start from _Unum non Est_, to trace what follows in regard to
_Unum_: the eighth and ninth adopt the same hypothesis, and reason
it out in reference to _Cætera_.
[Side-note: The Demonstrations in antagonising pairs, or
Antinomies. Perplexing entanglement of conclusions given without
any explanation.]
Of these demonstrations, one characteristic feature is, that they
are presented in antagonising pairs or Antinomies: except the
third, which professes to mediate between the first and second,
though only by introducing new difficulties. We have four distinct
Antinomies: the first and second, the fourth and fifth, the sixth
and seventh, the eighth and ninth, stand respectively in emphatic
contradiction with each other. Moreover, to take the
demonstrations separately--the first, fifth, seventh, ninth, end
in conclusions purely negative: the other four end in double and
contradictory conclusions. The purpose is formally proclaimed, of
showing that the same premisses, ingeniously handled, can be made
to yield these contradictory results.[47] No attempt is made to
reconcile the contradictions, except partially by means of the
third, in reference to the two preceding. In regard to the fourth
and fifth, sixth and seventh, eighth and ninth, no hint is given
that they can be, or afterwards will be, reconciled. The dialogue
concludes abruptly at the end of the ninth demonstration, with
these words: "We thus see that--whether Unum exists or does not
exist--Unum and Cætera both are, and are not, all things in every
way--both appear, and do not appear, all things in every way--each
in relation to itself, and each in relation to the other".[48]
Here is an unqualified and even startling announcement of double
and contradictory conclusions, obtained from the same premisses
both affirmative and negative: an announcement delivered too as
the fulfilment of the purpose of Parmenides. Nothing is said at
the end to intimate how the demonstrations are received by
Sokrates, nor what lesson they are expected to administer to him:
not a word of assent, or dissent, or surprise, or acknowledgment
in any way, from the assembled company, though all of them had
joined in entreating Parmenides, and had expressed the greatest
anxiety to hear his dialectic exhibition. Those who think that an
abrupt close, or an abrupt exordium, is sufficient reason for
declaring a dialogue not to be the work of Plato (as Platonic
critics often argue), are of course consistent in disallowing the
Parmenides. For my part, I do not agree in the opinion. I take
Plato as I find him, and I perceive both here and in the
Protagoras and elsewhere, that he did not always think it
incumbent upon him to adapt the end of his dialogues to the
beginning. This may be called a defect, but I do not feel called
upon to make out that Plato's writings are free from defects; and
to acknowledge nothing as his work unless I can show it to be
faultless.
[Footnote 47: See the connecting words between the first and
second demonstration, pp. 142 A, 159. [Greek: Ou)kou=n tau=ta me\n
ê)/dê e)ô=men ô(s phanera/, e)piskopô=men de\ pa/lin, e(\n ei)
e)/stin, _a)=ra kai\ ou)ch ou(/tôs e)/chei ta)/lla tou= e(no\s ê)\
ou(/tô mo/non?_] Also p. 163 B.]
[Footnote 48: Plato, Parmenid. ad fin. [Greek: Ei)rê/sthô toi/nun
tou=to/ te kai\ o(/ti, ô(s e)/oiken, e(\n ei)/t' e)/stin ei)/te
mê\ e)/stin, au)to/ te kai\ ta)/lla kai\ pro\s au(ta\ kai\ pro\s
a)/llêla pa/nta pa/ntôs e)sti/ te kai\ ou)k e)sti kai\ phai/netai/
te kai\ ou) phai/netai.]]
[Side-note: Different judgments of Platonic critics respecting the
Antinomies and the dialogue generally.]
The demonstrations or Antinomies in the last half of the
Parmenides are characterised by K. F. Hermann and others as a
masterpiece of speculative acuteness. Yet if these same
demonstrations, constructed with care and labour for the purpose
of proving that the same premisses will conduct to double and
contradictory conclusions, had come down to us from antiquity
under the name either of the Megaric Eukleides, or Protagoras, or
Gorgias--many of the Platonic critics would probably have said of
them (what is now said of the sceptical treatise remaining to us
under the name of Gorgias) that they were poor productions worthy
of such Sophists, who are declared to have made a trade of
perverting truth. Certainly the conclusions of the demonstrations
are specimens of that "Both and Neither," which Plato (in the
Euthydemus[49]) puts into the mouth of the Sophist Dionysodorus as
an answer of slashing defiance--and of that intentional evolution
of contradictions which Plato occasionally discountenances, both
in the Euthydemus and elsewhere.[50] And we know from Proklus[51]
that there were critics in ancient times, who depreciated various
parts of the Parmenides as sophistical. Proklus himself denies the
charge with some warmth. He as well as the principal
Neo-Platonists between 200-530 A.D. (especially his predecessors and
instructors at Athens, Jamblichus, Syrianus, and Plutarchus)
admired the Parmenides as a splendid effort of philosophical
genius in its most exalted range, inspired so as to become
cognizant of superhuman persons and agencies. They all agreed so
far as to discover in the dialogue a sublime vein of mystic
theology and symbolism: but along with this general agreement,
there was much discrepancy in their interpretation of particular
parts and passages. The commentary of Proklus attests the
existence of such debates, reporting his own dissent from the
interpretations sanctioned by his venerated masters, Plutarchus
and Syrianus. That commentary, in spite of its prolixity, is
curious to read as a specimen of the fifth century, A.D., in one
of its most eminent representatives. Proklus discovers a string of
theological symbols and a mystical meaning throughout the whole
dialogue: not merely in the acute argumentation which
characterises its middle part, but also in the perplexing
antinomies of its close, and even in the dramatic details of
places, persons, and incidents, with which it begins.[52]
[Footnote 49: Plato, Euthydem. p. 300 C. [Greek: A)ll' ou) tou=to
e)rôtô=, a)lla\ ta\ pa/nta siga=| ê)\ le/gei? _Ou)de/tera kai\
a)mpho/tera_, e)/phê u(pharpa/sas o( Dionuso/dôros; eu)= ga\r
oi)=da o(/ti tê=| a)pokri/sei ou)ch e(/xeis o(/, ti chrê=|.]]
[Footnote 50: Plato, Sophist. p. 259 B. [Greek: ei)/te ô(s ti
chalepo\n katanenoêkô\s chai/rei, tote\ me\n e)pi\ tha/tera tote\
d' e)pi\ tha/tera tou\s lo/gous e(/lkôn, ou)k a)/xia pollê=s
spoudê=s e)spou/daken, ô(s oi( nu=n lo/goi phasi/n.]--Also p. 259
D. [Greek: To\ de\ tau)to\n e(/teron a)pophai/nein a(mê=| ge/ pê|,
kai\ to\ tha/teron tau)to/n, kai\ to\ me/ga smikro/n, kai\ to\
o(/moion a)no/moion, kai\ chai/rein ou(/tô ta)nanti/a a)ei\
prophe/ronta e)n toi=s lo/gois, ou)/ te/ tis e)/legchos ou(=tos
a)lêthino/s, a)/rti te tô=n o)/ntôn tino\s e)phaptome/nou dê=los
neogenê\s ô)/n.]]
[Footnote 51: Proklus, ad Platon. Parmen. p. 953, ed. Stallb.;
compare p. 976 in the last book of the commentary, probably
composed by Damaskius. K. F. Hermann, Geschichte und System der
Platon. Philos. p. 507.]
[Footnote 52: This commentary is annexed to Stallbaum's edition of
the Parmenides. Compare also the opinion of Marinus (disciple and
biographer of Proklus) about the Parmenidês--Suidas v. [Greek:
Mari=nos]. Jamblichus declared that Plato's entire theory of
philosophy was embodied in the two dialogues, Parmenides and
Timæus: in the Parmenides, all the intelligible or universal Entia
were deduced from [Greek: to\ e(/n]: in the Timæus, all cosmical
realities were deduced from the Demiurgus. Proklus ad Timæeum, p.
5 A, p. 10 Schneider.
Alkinous, in his Introduction to the Platonic Dialogues (c. 6, p.
159, in the Appendix Platonica attached to K. F. Hermann's edition
of Plato) quotes several examples of syllogistic reasoning from
the Parmenides, and affirms that the ten categories of Aristotle
are exhibited therein.
Plotinus (Ennead. v. 1, 8) gives a brief summary of what he
understood to be contained in the Antinomies of the Platonic
Parmenides; but the interpretation departs widely from the
original.
I transcribe a few sentences from the argument of Ficinus, to show
what different meanings may be discovered in the same words by
different critics. (Ficini Argum. in Plat. Parmen. p. 756.) "Cum
Plato per omnes ejus dialogos totius sapientiæ semina sparserit,
in libris De Republicâ cuncta moralis philosophiæ instituta
collegit, omnem naturalium rerum scientiam in Timæo, universam in
Parmenide complexus est Theologiam. Cumque in aliis longo
intervallo cæteros philosophos antecesserit, in hoc tandem seipsum
superasse videtur. Hic enim divus Plato de ipso Uno subtilissimé
disputat: quemadmodum Ipsum Unum rerum omnium principium est,
super omnia, omniaque ab illo: quo pacto ipsum extra omnia sit et
in omnibus: omniaque ex illo, per illud, atque ad illud. Ad hujus,
quod super essentiam est, Unius intelligentiam gradatim ascendit.
In iis quæ fluunt et sensibus subjiciuntur et sensibilia
nominantur: In iis etiam quas semper eadem sunt et sensibilia
nuncupantur, non sensibus amplius sed solâ mente percipienda: Nec
in iis tantum, verum etiam supra sensum et sensibilia,
intellectumque et intelligibilia:--ipsum Unum existit.--Illud
insuper advertendum est, quod in hoc dialogo cum dicitur _Unum_,
Pythagoreorum more quæque substantia a materiâ penitus absoluta
significari potest: ut Deus, Mens, Anima. Cum vero dicitur Aliud
et Alia, tam materia, quam illa quæ in materiâ fiunt, intelligere
licet."
The Prolegomena, prefixed by Thomson to his edition of the
Parmenides, interpret the dialogue in the same general way as
Proklus and Ficinus: they suppose that by Unum is understood
Summus Deus, and they discover in the concluding Antinomies
theological demonstrations of the unity, simplicity, and other
attributes of God. Thomson observes, very justly, that the
Parmenides is one of the most difficult dialogues in Plato
(Prolegom. iv.-x.) But in my judgment, his mode of exposition, far
from smoothing the difficulties, adds new ones greater than those
in the text.]
The various explanations of it given by more recent commentators
may be seen enumerated in the learned Prolegomena of
Stallbaum,[53] who has also set forth his own views at
considerable length. And the prodigious opposition between the
views of Proklus (followed by Ficinus in the fifteenth century),
who extols the Parmenides as including in mystic phraseology
sublime religious truths--and those of the modern Tiedemann, who
despises them as foolish subtleties and cannot read them with
patience--is quite sufficient to inspire a reasonable Platonic
critic with genuine diffidence.
[Footnote 53: Stallbaum, Prolegg. in Parmen. ii. 1, pp. 244-265.
Compare K. F. Hermann, Gesch. und Syst. der Platon. Phil. pp.
507-668-670.
To the works which he has there enumerated, may be added the
Dissertation by Dr. Kuno Fischer, Stuttgart, 1851, De Parmenide
Platonico, and that of Zeller, Platonische Studien, p. 169 seqq.
Kuno Fischer (pp. 102-103) after Hegel (Gesch. der Griech. Phil.
I. p. 202), and some of the followers of Hegel, extol the
Parmenides as a masterpiece of dialectics, though they complain
that "der philosophirende Pöbel" misunderstand it, and treat it as
obscure. Werder, Logik, pp. 92-176, Berlin, 1841. Carl Beck,
Platon's Philosophie im Abriss ihrer genetischen Entwickelung, p.
75, Reutlingen, 1852. Marbach, Gesch. der Griech. Phil. sect. 96,
pp. 210-211.]
[Side-note: No dogmatical solution or purpose is wrapped up in the
dialogue. The purpose is negative, to make a theorist keenly feel
all the difficulties of theorising.]
In so far as these different expositions profess, each in its own
way, to detect a positive dogmatical result or purpose in the
Parmenides,[54] none of them carry conviction to my mind, any more
than the mystical interpretations which we read in Proklus. If
Plato had any such purpose, he makes no intimation of it, directly
or indirectly. On the contrary, he announces another purpose not
only different, but contrary. The veteran Parmenides, while
praising the ardour of speculative research displayed by Sokrates,
at the same time reproves gently, but distinctly, the confident
forwardness of two such immature youths as Sokrates and Aristotle
in laying down positive doctrines without the preliminary exercise
indispensable for testing them.[55] Parmenides appears from the
beginning to the end of the dialogue as a propounder of doubts and
objections, not as a doctrinal teacher. He seeks to restrain the
haste of Sokrates--to make him ashamed of premature affirmation
and the false persuasion of knowledge--to force upon him a keen
sense of real difficulties which have escaped his notice. To this
end, a specimen is given of the exercise required. It is certainly
well calculated to produce the effect intended--of hampering,
perplexing, and putting to shame, the affirmative rashness of a
novice in philosophy. It exhibits a tangled skein of ingenious
contradiction which the novice must somehow bring into order,
before he is in condition to proclaim any positive dogma. If it
answers this purpose, it does all that Parmenides promises.
Sokrates is warned against attaching himself exclusively to one
side of an hypothesis, and neglecting the opposite: against
surrendering himself to some pre-conception, traditional, or
self-originated, and familiarising his mind with its consequences,
while no pains are taken to study the consequences of the negative
side, and bring them into comparison. It is this one-sided mental
activity, and premature finality of assertion, which Parmenides
seeks to correct. Whether the corrective exercises which he
prescribes are the best for the purpose, may be contested: but
assuredly the malady which he seeks to correct is deeply rooted in
our human nature, and is combated by Sokrates himself, though by
other means, in several of the Platonic dialogues. It is a rare
mental endowment to study both sides of a question, and suspend
decision until the consequences of each are fully known.
[Footnote 54: I agree with Schleiermacher, in considering that the
purpose of the Parmenides is nothing beyond [Greek: gumnasi/a], or
exercise in the method and perplexities of philosophising (Einl.
p. 83): but I do not agree with him, when he says (pp. 90-105)
that the objections urged by Parmenides (in the middle of the
dialogue) against the separate substantiality of Forms or Ideas,
though noway answered in the dialogue itself, are sufficiently
answered in other dialogues (which he considers later in time),
especially in the Sophistes (though, according to Brandis, Handb.
Gr.-Röm. Phil. p. 241, the Sophistes is earlier than the
Parmenides). Zeller, on the other hand, denies that these
objections are at all answered in the Sophistes; but he maintains
that the second part of the Parmenides itself clears up the
difficulties propounded in the first part. After an elaborate
analysis (in the Platon. Studien, pp. 168-178) of the Antinomies
or contradictory Demonstrations in the concluding part of the
dialogue, Zeller affirms the purpose of them to be "die richtige
Ansicht von den Ideen als der Einheit in dem Mannichfaltigen der
Erscheinung dialektisch zu begründen, die Ideenlehre möglichen
Einwürfen und Missverständnissen gegenüber dialektisch zu
begründen" (pp. 180-182). This solution has found favour with some
subsequent commentators. See Susemihl, Die genetische Entwickelung
der Platon. Philosophie, pp. 341-353; Heinrich Stein,
Vorgeschichte und System des Platonismus, pp. 217-220.
To me it appears (what Zeller himself remarks in p. 188, upon the
discovery of Schleiermacher that the objections started in the
Parmenides are answered in the Sophistes) that it requires all the
acuteness of so able a writer as Zeller to detect any such result
as that which he here extracts from the Parmenidean Antinomies--from
what Aristeides calls (Or. xlvii. p. 430) "the One and Many,
the multiplied twists and doublings, of this divine dialogue". I
confess that I am unable to perceive therein what Zeller has
either found or elicited. Objections and misunderstandings
(Einwürfe und Missverständnisse), far from being obviated or
corrected, are accumulated from the beginning to the end of these
Antinomies, and are summed up in a formidable total by the final
sentence of the dialogue. Moreover, none of these objections which
Parmenides had advanced in the earlier part of the dialogue are at
all noticed, much less answered, in the concluding Antinomies.
The general view taken by Zeller of the Platonic Parmenides, is
repeated by him in his Phil. der Griech. vol. ii. pp. 394-415-429,
ed. 2nd. In the first place, I do not think that he sets forth
exactly (see p. 415) the reasoning as we read it in Plato; but
even if that were exactly set forth, still what we read in Plato
is nothing but an assemblage of difficulties and contradictions.
These are indeed suggestive, and such as a profound critic may
meditate with care, until he finds himself put upon a train of
thought conducting him to conclusions sound and tenable in his
judgment. But the explanations, sufficient or not, belong after
all not to Plato but to the critic himself. Other critics may
attach, and have attached, totally different explanations to the
same difficulties. I see no adequate evidence to bring home any
one of them to Plato; or to prove (what is the main point to be
determined) that any one of them was present to his mind when he
composed the dialogue.
Schwegler also gives an account of what he affirms to be the
purpose and meaning of the Parmenides--"The positive meaning of
the antinomies contained in it can only be obtained by inferences
which Plato does not himself expressly enunciate, but leaves to
the reader to draw" (Geschichte der Philosophie im Umriss, sect.
14, 4 c. pp. 52-53, ed. 5).
A learned man like Schwegler, who both knows the views of other
philosophers, and has himself reflected on philosophy, may perhaps
find affirmative meaning in the Parmenides; just as Sokrates, in
the Platonic Protagoras, finds his own ethical doctrine in the
song of the poet Simonides. But I venture to say that no
contemporary reader of Plato could have found such a meaning in
the Parmenides; and that if Plato intended to communicate such a
meaning, the whole structure of the dialogue would be only an
elaborate puzzle calculated to prevent nearly all readers from
reaching it.
By assigning the leadership of the dialogue to Parmenides
(Schwegler says) Plato intends to signify that the Platonic
doctrine of Ideas is coincident with the doctrine of Parmenides,
and is only a farther development thereof. How can this be
signified, when the discourse assigned to Parmenides consists of a
string of objections against the doctrine of Ideas, concluding
with an intimation that there are other objections, yet stronger,
remaining behind?
The fundamental thought of the Parmenides (says Schwegler) is,
that the One is not conceivable in complete abstraction from the
Many, nor the Many in complete abstraction from the One,--that
each reciprocally supposes and serves as condition to the other.
Not so: for if we follow the argumentation of Parmenides (p. 131
E), we shall see that what he principally insists upon, is the
entire impossibility of any connection or participation between
the One and the Many--there is an impassable gulf between them.
Is the discussion of [Greek: to\ e(\n] (in the closing Antinomies)
intended as an example of dialectic investigation--or is it _per
se_ the special object of the dialogue? This last is clearly the
truth (says Schwegler). "otherwise the dialogue would end without
result, and its two portions would be without any internal
connection". Not so; for if we read the dialogue, we find
Parmenides clearly proclaiming and singling out [Greek: to\ e(\n]
as only one among a great many different notions, each of which
must be made the subject of a bilateral hypothesis, to be followed
out into its consequences on both sides (p. 136 A). Moreover, I
think that the "internal connection" between the first and the
last half of the dialogue, consists in the application of this
dialectic method, and in nothing else. If the dialogue ends
without result, this is true of many other Platonic dialogues. The
student is brought face to face with logical difficulties, and has
to find out the solution for himself; or perhaps to find out that
no solution can be obtained.]
[Footnote 55: Plato, Parmenid. p. 135 C.]
[Side-note: This negative purpose is expressly announced by Plato
himself. All dogmatical purpose, extending farther, is purely
hypothetical, and even inconsistent with what is declared.]
Such, in my judgment, is the drift of the contradictory
demonstrations here put into the mouth of Parmenides respecting
Unum and Cætera. Thus far at least, we are perfectly safe: for we
are conforming strictly to the language of Plato himself in the
dialogue: we have no proof that he meant anything more. Those who
presume that he must have had some ulterior dogmatical purpose,
place themselves upon hypothetical ground: but when they go
farther and attempt to set forth what this purpose was, they show
their ingenuity only by bringing out what they themselves have
dropped in. The number of discordant hypotheses attests[56] the
difficulty of the problem. I agree with those early Platonic
commentators (mentioned and opposed by Proklus) who could see no
other purpose in these demonstrations than that of dialectical
exercise. In this view Schleiermacher, Ast, Strümpell, and others
mainly concur: the two former however annexing to it a farther
hypothesis--which I think improbable--that the dialogue has come
to us incomplete; having once contained at the end (or having been
originally destined to contain, though the intention may never
have been realised) an appendix elucidating the perplexities of
the demonstrations.[57] This would have been inconsistent with the
purpose declared by Parmenides: who, far from desiring to
facilitate the onward march of Sokrates by clearing up
difficulties, admonishes him that he is advancing too rapidly, and
seeks to keep him back by giving him a heap of manifest
contradictions to disentangle. Plato conceives the training for
philosophy or for the highest exercise of intellectual force, to
be not less laborious than that which was required for the bodily
perfections of an Olympic athlete. The student must not be helped
out of difficulties at once: he must work his own way slowly out
of them.
[Footnote 56: Proklus ad Platon. Parmen. I. pp. 482-485, ed.
Stallb.; compare pp. 497-498-788-791, where Proklus is himself
copious upon the subject of exercise in dialectic method.
Stallbaum, after reciting many different hypothetical
interpretations from those interpreters who had preceded him, says
(Prolegg. p. 265), "En lustravimus tandem varias interpretum de
hoc libro opiniones. Quid igitur? verusne fui, quum suprà dicerem,
tantam fuisse hominum eruditorum in eo explicando fluctuationem
atque dissensionem, ut quamvis plurimi de eo disputaverint, tamen
ferè alius aliter judicaverit? Nimirum his omnibus cognitis,
facilè alicui in mentem veniat Terentianum illud--_Fecisti propé,
multo sim quam dudum incertior_."
Brandis (Handbuch Gr.-Röm. Phil. s. 105, pp. 257-258) cannot bring
himself to believe that dialectical exercise was the only purpose
with which Plato composed the Parmenides. He then proceeds to
state what Plato's ulterior purpose was, but in such very vague
language, that I hardly understand what he means, much less can I
find it in the Antinomies themselves. He has some clearer
language, p. 241, where he treats these Antinomies as preparatory
[Greek: a)pori/ai].]
[Footnote 57: Ast, Platon's Leben und Schriften, pp. 239-244;
Schleiermacher, Einleit. zum Parmen. pp. 94-99; Strümpell,
Geschichte der Theoretischen Philosophie der Griechen, sect. 96,
pp. 128-129.
I do not agree with Socher's conclusion, that the Parmenides is
not a Platonic composition. But I think he is quite right in
saying that the dialogue as it now stands performs all that
Parmenides promises, and leaves no ground for contending that it
is an unfinished fragment (Socher, Ueber Platon's Schriften, p.
286), so far as philosophical speculation is concerned. The
dialogue as a dramatic or literary composition undoubtedly lacks a
proper close; it is [Greek: a)/pous] or [Greek: kolobo\s]
(Aristot. Rhetor. iii. 8), sinning against the strict exigence
which Plato in the Phædrus applies to the discourse of Lysias.]
[Side-note: The Demonstrations or Antinomies considered. They
include much unwarranted assumption and subtlety. Collection of
unexplained perplexities or [Greek: a)pori/ai].]
That the demonstrations include assumption both unwarranted and
contradictory, mingled with sophistical subtlety (in the modern
sense of the words), is admitted by most of the commentators: and
I think that the real amount of it is greater than they admit. How
far Plato was himself aware of this, I will not undertake to say.
Perhaps he was not. The reasonings which have passed for sublime
and profound in the estimation of so many readers, may well have
appeared the same to their author. I have already remarked that
Plato's ratiocinative force is much greater on the negative side
than on the positive: more ingenious in suggesting logical
difficulties than sagacious in solving them. Impressed, as
Sokrates had been before him, with the duty of combating the false
persuasion of knowledge, or premature and untested belief,--he
undertook to set forth the pleadings of negation in the most
forcible manner. Many of his dialogues manifest this tendency, but
the Parmenides more than any other. That dialogue is a collection
of unexplained [Greek: a)pori/ai] (such as those enumerated in the
second book of Aristotle's Metaphysica) brought against a doctrine
which yet Plato declares to be the indispensable condition of all
reasoning. It concludes with a string of demonstrations by which
contradictory conclusions (Both and Neither) are successively
proved, and which appear like a _reductio ad absurdum_ of all
demonstration. But at the time when Plato composed the dialogue, I
think it not improbable that these difficulties and contradictions
appeared even to himself unanswerable: in other words, that he did
not himself see any answers and explanations of them. He had tied
a knot so complicated, that he could not himself untie it. I speak
of the state of Plato's mind when he wrote the Parmenides. At the
dates of other dialogues (whether earlier or later), he wrote
under different points of view; but no key to the Parmenides does
he ever furnish.
[Side-note: Even if Plato himself saw through these subtleties, he
might still choose to impose and to heap up difficulties in the
way of a forward affirmative aspirant.]
If however we suppose that Plato must have had the key present to
his own mind, he might still think it right to employ, in such a
dialogue, reasonings recognised by himself as defective. It is the
task imposed upon Sokrates to find out and expose these defective
links. There is no better way of illustrating how universal is the
malady of human intelligence--unexamined belief and over-confident
affirmation--as it stands proclaimed to be in the Platonic
Apology. Sokrates is exhibited in the Parmenides as placed under
the screw of the Elenchus, and no more able than others to
extricate himself from it, when it is applied by Parmenides:
though he bears up successfully against Zeno, and attracts to
himself respectful compliments, even from the aged dialectician
who tests him. After the Elenchus applied to himself, Sokrates
receives a farther lesson from the "Neither and Both"
demonstrations addressed by Parmenides to the still younger
Aristotle. Sokrates will thus be driven, with his indefatigable
ardour for speculative research, to work at the problem--to devote
to it those seasons of concentrated meditation, which sometimes
exhibited him fixed for hours in the same place and almost in the
same attitude[58]--until he can extricate himself from such
difficulties and contradictions. But that he shall not extricate
himself without arduous mental effort, is the express intention of
Parmenides: just as the Xenophontic Sokrates proceeds with the
youthful Euthydemus and the Platonic Sokrates with Lysis,
Theætetus, and others. Plausible subtlety was not unsuitable for
such a lesson.[59] Moreover, in the Parmenides, Plato proclaims
explicitly that the essential condition of the lesson is to be
strictly private: that a process so roundabout and tortuous cannot
be appreciated by ordinary persons, and would be unseemly before
an audience.[60] He selects as respondent the youngest person in
the company, one still younger than Sokrates: because (he says)
such a person will reply with artless simplicity, to each question
as the question may strike him--not carrying his mind forward to
the ulterior questions for which his reply may furnish the
handle--not afraid of being entangled in puzzling inconsistencies--not
solicitous to baffle the purpose of the interrogator.[61] All this
betokens the plan of the dialogue--to bring to light all those
difficulties which do not present themselves except to a
keen-sighted enquirer.
[Footnote 58: Plato, Symposion, p. 220 C-D: compare pp. 174-175.
In the dialogue Parmenides (p. 130 E), Parmenides himself is
introduced as predicting that the youthful Sokrates will become
more and more absorbed in philosophy as he advances in years.
Proklus observes in his commentary on the dialogue--[Greek: o(
ga\r Sôkra/tês a)/gatai ta\s a)pori/as], &c. (L. v. p. 252).]
[Footnote 59: Xenoph. Memor. iv. 2, ad fin.]
[Footnote 60: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 136 C, 137 A. Hobbes remarks
(Computatio sive Logica, Part I, ch. iii. s. 12), "Learners ought
to go through logical exercises silently and by themselves: for it
will be thought both ridiculous and absurd, for a man to use such
language publicly".
Proklus tells us, that the difficulty of the [Greek: gumnasi/a]
here enjoined by the Platonic Parmenides is so prodigious, that no
one after Plato employed it (Prokl. ad Parmenid. p. 306, p. 801,
Stallb.).
[Greek: ei) me\n ou)=n plei/ous ê)=men, ou)k a)\n a)/xion ê)=n
dei=sthai. a)prepê= ga\r ta\ toiau=ta pollô=n e)nanti/on le/gein,
a)/llôs te kai\ têlikou/tô|; a)gnoou=si ga\r oi( polloi\ o(/ti
a)neu tau/tês tê=s dia\ pa/ntôn diexo/dou kai\ pla/nês a)du/naton
e)ntucho/nta tô=| a)lêthei= nou=n schei=n.]]
[Footnote 61: Plato, Parmenides, p. 137 B; compare Sophistes, p.
217 D.
To understand the force of this remark of Parmenides, we should
contrast it with the precepts given by Aristotle in the Topica for
dialectic debate: precepts teaching the questioner how to puzzle,
and the respondent how to avoid being puzzled. Such precautions
are advised to the respondent by Aristotle, not merely in the
Topica but also in the Analytica--[Greek: chrê\ d' o(/per
phula/ttesthai paragge/llomen a)pokrinome/nous, au)tou\s
e)picheirou=ntas peira=sthai lantha/nein] (Anal. Priora, ii. p.
66, a. 33).]
[Side-note: The exercises exhibited by Parmenides are exhibited
only as illustrative specimens of a method enjoined to be applied
to many other Antinomies.]
We must remark farther, that the two hypotheses here handled at
length by Parmenides are presented by him only as examples of a
dialectical process which he enjoins the lover of truth to apply
equally to many other hypotheses.[62] As he shows that in the case
of Unum, each of the two assumptions (Unum est--Unum non est) can
be traced through different threads of deductive reasoning so as
to bring out double and contradictory results--Both and Neither:
so also in the case of those other assumptions which remain to be
tested afterwards in like manner, antinomies of the same character
may be expected: antinomies apparent at least, if not real--which
must be formally propounded and dealt with, before we can trust
ourselves as having attained reasoned truth. Hence we see that,
negative and puzzling as the dialogue called Parmenides is, even
now--it would be far more puzzling if all that it prescribes in
general terms had been executed in detail. While it holds out, in
the face of an aspirant in philosophy, the necessity of giving
equal presumptive value to the affirmative and negative sides of
each hypothesis, and deducing with equal care, the consequences of
both--it warns him at the same time of the contradictions in which
he will thereby become involved. These contradictions are
presented in the most glaring manner: but we must recollect a
striking passage in the Republic, where Plato declares that to
confront the aspirant with manifest contradictions, is the best
way of provoking him to intellectual effort in the higher regions
of speculation.[63]
[Footnote 62: Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 B.]
[Footnote 63: Plato, Repub. vii. p. 524 E, and indeed the whole
passage, pp. 523-524.]
[Side-note: These Platonic Antinomies are more formidable than any
of the sophisms or subtleties broached by the Megaric
philosophers.]
I have already had occasion, when I touched upon the other _viri
Socratici_, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Plato, to give
some account of the Zenonian and Megaric dialecticians, and of
their sophisms or logical puzzles, which attracted so much
attention from speculative men, in the fourth and third centuries
B.C. These Megarics, like the Sophists, generally receive very
harsh epithets from the historian of philosophy. They took the
negative side, impugned affirmative dogmas, insisted on doubts and
difficulties, and started problems troublesome to solve. I have
tried to show, that such disputants, far from deserving all the
censure which has been poured upon them, presented one
indispensable condition to the formation of any tolerable logical
theory.[64] Their sophisms were challenges to the logician,
indicating various forms of error and confusion, against which a
theory of reasoning, in order to be sufficient, was required to
guard. And the demonstrations given by Plato in the latter half of
the Parmenides are challenges of the same kind: only more
ingenious, elaborate, and effective, than any of those (so far as
we know them) proposed by the Megarics--by Zeno, or Eukleides, or
Diodorus Kronus. The Platonic Parmenides here shows, that in
regard to a particular question, those who believe the
affirmative, those who believe the negative, and those who believe
neither--can all furnish good reasons for their respective
conclusions. In each case he gives the proof confidently as being
good: and whether unimpeachable or not, it is certainly very
ingenious and subtle. Such demonstrations are in the spirit of
Sextus Empiricus, who rests his theory of scepticism upon the
general fact, that there are opposite and contradictory
conclusions, both of them supported by evidence equally good: the
affirmative no more worthy of belief than the negative.[65] Zeno
(or, as Plato calls him, the Eleatic Palamêdes[66]) did not
profess any systematic theory of scepticism; but he could prove by
ingenious and varied dialectic, both the thesis and the antithesis
on several points of philosophy, by reasons which few, if any,
among his hearers could answer. In like manner the Platonic
Parmenides enunciates his contradictory demonstrations as real
logical problems, which must exercise the sagacity and hold back
the forward impulse of an eager philosophical aspirant. Even if
this dilemma respecting Unum Est and Unum non Est, be solved,
Parmenides intimates that he has others in reserve: so that either
no tenable positive result will ever be attained--or at least it
will not be attained until after such an amount of sagacity and
patient exercise as Sokrates himself declares to be hardly
practicable.[67] Herein we may see the germ and premisses of that
theory which was afterwards formally proclaimed by Ænesidemus and
the professed Sceptics: the same holding back ([Greek: e)pochê\]),
and protest against precipitation in dogmatising,[68] which these
latter converted into a formula and vindicated as a system.
[Footnote 64: Among the commentators on the Categories of
Aristotle, there were several whose principal object it was to
propound all the most grave and troublesome difficulties which
they could think of. Simplikius does not commend the style of
these men, but he expresses his gratitude to them for the pains
which they had taken in the exposition of the negative case, and
for the stimulus and opportunity which they had thus administered
to the work of affirmative exposition (Simplikius, Schol. ad
Categ. Aristot. p. 40, a. 22-30; Schol. Brandis). David the
Armenian, in his Scholia on the Categories (p. 27, b. 41,
Brandis), defends the Topica of Aristotle as having been composed
[Greek: gumnasi/as cha/rin, i(/na thlibome/nê ê( psuchê\ e)k tô=n
e)ph' e(ka/tera e)picheirêma/tôn a)pogennê/sê| to\ tê=s
a)lêthei/as phô=s.]]
[Footnote 65: Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hypot. i. 8-12. [Greek: E)/sti de\
ê( skeptikê\ du/namis a)ntithetikê\ phainome/nôn te kai\
nooume/nôn kath' oi(ondê/pote tro/pon, a)ph' ê(=s e)rcho/metha,
dia\ tê\n e)n toi=s a)ntikeime/nois pra/gmasi kai\ lo/gois
i)sosthe/neian, to\ me\n prô=ton ei)s e)pochê\n to\ de\ meta\
tou=to ei)s a)taraxi/an . . . _i)sosthe/neian_ de\ le/gomen tê\n
kata\ pi/stin kai\ a)pisti/an i)so/têta, ô(s mêde/na mêdeno\s
prokei=sthai tô=n machome/nôn lo/gôn ô(s pisto/teron . . .
susta/seôs de\ tê=s skeptikê=s e)stin a)rchê\ ma/lista _to\ panti\
lo/gô| lo/gon i)/son a)ntikei=sthai_.]]
[Footnote 66: Plato, Phædrus, p. 261 D.]
[Footnote 67: Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 C-D.]
[Footnote 68: Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. i. 20-212. [Greek: tê\n tô=n
dogmatikô=n prope/teian--tê\n dogmatikê\n prope/teian.]]
[Side-note: In order to understand fully the Platonic Antinomies,
we ought to have before us the problems of the Megarics and
others. Uselessness of searching for a positive result.]
Schleiermacher has justly observed,[69] that in order to
understand properly the dialectic manoeuvres of the Parmenides,
we ought to have had before us the works of that philosopher
himself, of Zeno, Melissus, Gorgias, and other sceptical reasoners
of the age immediately preceding--which have unfortunately
perished. Some reference to these must probably have been present
to Plato in the composition of this dialogue.[70] At the same
time, if we accept the dialogue as being (what it declares itself
to be) a string of objections and dialectical problems, we shall
take care not to look for any other sort of merit than what such a
composition requires and admits. If the objections are forcible,
the problems ingenious and perplexing, the purpose of the author
is satisfied. To search in the dialogue for some positive result,
not indeed directly enunciated but discoverable by groping and
diving--would be to expect a species of fruit inconsistent with
the nature of the tree. [Greek: Zêtô=n eu(rê/seis ou) r(o/don
a)lla\ ba/ton.]
[Footnote 69: Schleiermacher, Einleitung zum Parmen. pp. 97-99.]
[Footnote 70: Indeed, the second demonstration, among the nine
given by Parmenides (pp. 143 A, 155 C), coincides to a great
degree with the conclusion which Zeno is represented as having
maintained in his published dissertation (p. 127 E); and shows
that the difficulties and contradictions belong to the world of
invisible Ideas, as well as to that of sensible particulars, which
Sokrates had called in question (p. 129 C-E).
The Aristotelian treatise (whether by Aristotle, Theophrastus, or
any other author) De Zenone, Melisso, Xenophane, et
Gorgiâ--affords some curious comparisons with the Parmenides of Plato.
Aristotel. p. 974 seq. Bekk.; also Fragmenta Philosophorum
Græcorum, ed. Didot, pp. 278-309.]
[Side-note: Assumptions of Parmenides in his Demonstrations convey
the minimum of determinate meaning. Views of Aristotle upon these
indeterminate predicates, Ens, Unum, &c.]
It may indeed be useful for the critic to perform for himself the
process which Parmenides intended Sokrates to perform; and to
analyse these subtleties with a view to measure their bearing upon
the work of dogmatic theorising. We see double and contradictory
conclusions elicited, in four separate Antinomies, from the same
hypothesis, by distinct chains of interrogatory deduction; each
question being sufficiently plausible to obtain the acquiescence
of the respondent. The two assumptions successively laid down by
Parmenides as _principia_ for deduction--_Si Unum est_--_Si Unum
non est_--convey the very minimum of determinate meaning. Indeed
both words are essentially indeterminate. Both Unum and Ens are
declared by Aristotle to be not univocal or generic words,[71]
though at the same time not absolutely equivocal: but words
bearing several distinct transitional meanings, derived either
from each other, or from some common root, by an analogy more or
less remote. Aristotle characterises in like manner all the most
indeterminate predicates, which are not included in any one
distinct category among the ten, but are made available to
predication sometimes in one category, sometimes in another: such
as Ens, Unum, Idem, Diversum, Contrarium, &c. Now in the Platonic
Parmenides, the two first among these words are taken to form the
proposition assumed as fundamental datum, and the remaining three
are much employed in the demonstration: yet Plato neither notices
nor discriminates their multifarious and fluctuating
significations. Such contrast will be understood when we recollect
that the purpose of the Platonic Parmenides is, to propound
difficulties; while that of Aristotle is, not merely to propound,
but also to assist in clearing them up.
[Footnote 71: Aristot. Metaphys. iv. 1015-1017, ix. 1052, a. 15;
Anal. Poster. ii. p. 92, b. 14. [Greek: to\ d' ei)=nai ou)k
ou)si/a ou)deni/. ou) ga\r ge/nos to\ o)/n.]--Topica, iv. p. 127,
a. 28. [Greek: plei/ô ga\r ta\ pa=sin e(po/mena; oi(=on to\ o)\n
kai\ to\ e(\n tô=n pa=sin e(pome/nôn e)/stin], Physica, i. p.
185, b. 6.
Simplikius noted it as one among the differences between Plato and
Aristotle--That Plato admitted Unum as having only one meaning,
not being aware of the diversity of meanings which it bore; while
Aristotle expressly pointed it out as a [Greek: pollakô=s
lego/menon] (Schol. ad Aristot. Sophist. Elench. p. 320, b. 3,
Brandis). Aristotle farther remarks that Plato considered [Greek:
to\ ge/nos] as [Greek: e(\n a)rithmô=|], and that this was an
error; we ought rather to say that Plato did not clearly
discriminate [Greek: e(\n a)rithmô=|] from [Greek: e(\n ei)/dei]
(Aristot. Topic. vi. 143, b. 30).
Simplikius farther remarks, that it was Aristotle who first
rendered to Logic the important service of bringing out clearly
and emphatically the idea of [Greek: to\ o(mô/numon]--the same
word with several meanings either totally distinct and disparate,
or ramifying in different directions from the same root, so that
there came to be little or no affinity between many of them. It
was Aristotle who first classified and named these distinctions
([Greek: sunô/numon--o(mô/numon], and the intermediate [Greek:
kat' a)nalogi/an]), though they had been partially noticed by
Plato and even by Sokrates. [Greek: e(/ôs A)ristote/lous ou)
pa/mpan e)/kdêlon ê)=n to\ o(mô/numon; a)lla\ Pla/tôn te ê)/rxato
peri\ tou/tou ê)\ ma=llon e)kei/nou Sôkra/tês], Schol. ad Aristot.
Physic. p. 323, b. 24, Brandis.]
[Side-note: In the Platonic Demonstrations the same proposition in
words is made to bear very different meanings.]
Certainly, in Demonstrations 1 and 2 (as well as 4 and 5), the
foundation assumed is in words the same proposition--_Si Unum
est_: but we shall find this same proposition used in two very
different senses. In the first Demonstration, the proposition is
equivalent to _Si Unum est Unum_:[72] in the second, to _Si Unum
est Ens_, or _Si Unum existit_. In the first the proposition is
identical and the verb _est_ serves only as copula: in the second,
the verb _est_ is not merely a copula but implies Ens as a
predicate, and affirms existence. We might have imagined that the
identical proposition--_Unum est Unum_--since it really affirms
nothing--would have been barren of all consequences: and so indeed
it is barren of all affirmative consequences. But Plato obtains
for it one first step in the way of negative predicates--_Si Unum
est Unum, Unum non est Multa_: and from hence he proceeds, by a
series of gentle transitions ingeniously managed, to many other
negative predications respecting the subject _Unum_. Since it is
not Multa, it can have no parts, nor can it be a whole: it has
neither beginning, middle, nor end: it has no boundary, or it is
boundless: it has no figure, it is neither straight nor circular:
it has therefore no place, being neither in itself, nor in
anything else: it is neither in motion nor at rest: it is neither
the same with anything else, nor the same with itself:[73] it is
neither different from any thing else, nor different from itself:
it is neither like, nor unlike, to itself, nor to anything else:
it is neither equal, nor unequal, to itself nor to any thing else:
it is neither older nor younger, nor of equal age, either with
itself or with anything else: it exists therefore not in time, nor
has it any participation with time: it neither has been nor will
be, nor is: it does not exist in any way: it does not even exist
so as to be Unum: you can neither name it, nor reason upon it, nor
know it, nor perceive it, nor opine about it.
[Footnote 72: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 137 C, 142 B.]
[Footnote 73: This part of the argument is the extreme of
dialectic subtlety, p. 139 C-D-E.]
[Side-note: First demonstration ends in an assemblage of negative
conclusions. _Reductio ad Absurdum_, of the assumption--Unum non
Multa.]
All these are impossibilities (concludes Plato). We must therefore
go back upon the fundamental principle from which we took our
departure, in order to see whether we shall not obtain, on a
second trial, any different result.[74]
[Footnote 74: Plato, Parmenid. p. 142 A.]
Here then is a piece of dialectic, put together with ingenuity,
showing that everything can be denied, and that nothing can be
affirmed of the subject--Unum. All this follows, if you concede
the first step, that Unum is not Multa. If Unum be said to have
any other attribute except that of being Unum, it would become at
once Multa. It cannot even be declared to be either the same with
itself, or different from any thing else; because Idem and
Diversum are distinct natures from Unum, and if added to it would
convert it into Multa.[75] Nay it cannot even be affirmed to be
itself: it cannot be named or enunciated: if all predicates are
denied, the subject is denied along with them: the subject is
nothing but the sum total of its predicates--and when they are all
withdrawn, no subject remains. As far as I can understand the
bearing of this self-contradictory demonstration, it appears a
_reductio ad absurdum_ of the proposition--_Unum is not Multa_.
Now _Unum which is not Multa_ designates the [Greek: Au)to\-E(\n]
or Unum Ideale; which Plato himself affirmed, and which Aristotle
impugned.[76] If this be what is meant, the dialogue Parmenides
would present here, as in other places, a statement of
difficulties understood by Plato as attaching to his own
doctrines.
[Footnote 75: This is the main point of Demonstration 1, and is
stated pp. 139 D, 140 A, compared with p. 137 C.]
[Footnote 76: Aristot. Metaph. A. 987, b. 20; A. 992, a. 8; B.
1001, a. 27; I. 1053, b. 18. Some ancient expositors thought that
the purpose of Plato in the Parmenides was to demonstrate this
[Greek: Au)to\-E(\n]; see Schol. ad Aristot. Metaph. p. 786, a.
10, Brandis.
It is not easy to find any common bearing between the
demonstrations given in this dialogue respecting [Greek: E(\n] and
[Greek: Polla\]--and the observations which Plato makes in the
Philêbus upon [Greek: E(\n] and [Greek: Polla/]. Would he mean to
include the demonstrations which we read in the Parmenides, in the
category of what he calls in Philêbus "childish, easy, and
irrational debates on that vexed question?" (Plato, Philêbus, p.
14 D). Hardly: for they are at any rate most elaborate as well as
ingenious and suggestive. Yet neither do they suit the description
which he gives in Philêbus of the genuine, serious, and difficult
debates on the same question.]
[Side-note: Second Demonstration.]
Parmenides now proceeds to his second demonstration: professing to
take up again the same hypothesis--_Si Unum est_--from which he
had started in the first[77]--but in reality taking up a different
hypothesis under the same words. In the first hypothesis, _Si Unum
est_, was equivalent to, _Si Unum est Unum_: nothing besides
_Unum_ being taken into the reasoning, and _est_ serving merely as
copula. In the second, _Si Unum est_, is equivalent to, _Si Unum
est Ens_, or exists: so that instead of the isolated _Unum_, we
have now _Unum Ens_.[78] Here is a duality consisting of _Unum and
Ens_: which two are considered as separate or separable factors,
coalescing to form the whole _Unum Ens_, each of them being a part
thereof. But each of these parts is again dual, containing both
_Unum and Ens_: so that each part may be again divided into lesser
parts, each of them alike dual: and so on ad infinitum. _Unum Ens_
thus contains an infinite number of parts, or is _Multa_.[79] But
even _Unum_ itself (Parmenides argues), if we consider it
separately from _Ens_ in which it participates, is not _Unum_
alone, but _Multa_ also. For it is different from _Ens_, and _Ens_
is different from it. _Unum_ therefore is not merely _Unum_ but
also _Diversum_: _Ens_ also is not merely _Ens_ but _Diversum_.
Now when we speak of _Unum_ and _Ens_--of _Unum_ and _Diversum_--or
of _Ens_ and _Diversum_--we in each case speak of two distinct
things, each of which is _Unum_. Since each is _Unum_, the two
things become three--_Ens_, _Diversum_, _Unum_--_Unum_,
_Diversum_, _Unum_--_Unum_ being here taken twice. We thus arrive
at two and three--twice and thrice--odd and even--in short,
number, with its full extension and properties. Unum therefore is
both Unum and Multa--both Totum and Partes--both finite and
infinite in multitude.[80]
[Footnote 77: Plato, Parmenid. p. 142 A. [Greek: Bou/lei ou)=n
e)pi\ tê\n u(po/thesin pa/lin e)x a)rchê=s e)pane/lthômen, e)a/n
ti ê(mi=n e)paniou=sin a)lloi=on phanê=|?]]
[Footnote 78: This shifting of the real hypothesis, though the
terms remain unchanged, is admitted by implication a little
afterwards, p. 142 B. [Greek: _nu=n de\_ ou)ch au(/tê e)/stin ê(
u(po/thesis, _ei) e(\n e(\n_, ti/ chrê\ sumbai/nein, a)ll' _ei)
e(\n e)/stin_.]]
[Footnote 79: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 142-143. This is exactly what
Sokrates in the early part of the dialogue (p. 129 B-D) had
pronounced to be utterly inadmissible, _viz._: That [Greek: o(\
e)/stin e(\n] should be [Greek: polla\]--that [Greek: o(\ e)/stin
o(/moion] should be [Greek: a)no/moion]. The essential
characteristic of the Platonic Ideas is here denied. However, it
appears to me that Plato here reasons upon two contradictory
assumptions; first, that _Unum Ens_ is a total composed of two
parts separately assignable--_Unum_ and _Ens_; next, that _Unum_
is not assignable separately from _Ens_, nor _Ens_ from _Unum_.
Proceeding upon the first, he declares that the division must be
carried on ad infinitum, because you can never reach either the
separate _Ens_ or the separate _Unum_. But these two assumptions
cannot be admitted both together. Plato must make his election;
either he takes the first, in which case the total Unum Ens is
divisible, and its two factors, Unum and Ens, can be assigned
separately; or he takes the second, in which case _Unum_ and _Ens_
cannot be assigned separately--are not distinguishable factors,--so
that _Unum Ens_ instead of being infinitely divisible, is not
divisible at all.
The reasoning as it now stands is, in my judgment, fallacious.]
[Footnote 80: Plato, Parmen. pp. 144 A-E, 145 A.]
[Side-note: It ends in demonstrating _Both_, of that which the
first Demonstration had demonstrated _Neither_.]
Parmenides proceeds to show that Unum has beginning, middle, and
end--together with some figure, straight or curved: and that it is
both in itself, and in other things: that it is always both in
motion and at rest:[81] that it is both the same with itself and
different from itself--both the same with Cætera, and different
from Cætera:[82] both like to itself, and unlike to itself--both
like to Cætera, and unlike to Cætera:[83] that it both touches,
and does not touch, both itself and Cætera:[84] that it is both
equal, greater, and less, in number, as compared with itself and
as compared with Cætera:[85] that it is both older than itself,
younger than itself, and of the same age with itself--both older
than Cætera, younger than Cætera, and of the same age as
Cætera--also that it is not older nor younger either than itself or
than Cætera:[86] that it grows both older and younger than itself,
and than Cætera.[87] Lastly, Unum was, is, and will be; it has been,
is, and will be generated: it has had, has now, and will have,
attributes and predicates: it can be named, and can be the object
of perception, conception, opinion, reasoning, and cognition.[88]
[Footnote 81: Plato, Parmenid. p. 146 A-B.]
[Footnote 82: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 146-147 C.]
[Footnote 83: Plato, Parmenid. p. 148 A-D.]
[Footnote 84: Plato, Parmenid. p. 149 A-D.]
[Footnote 85: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 150-151 D.]
[Footnote 86: Plato, Parmen. pp. 152-153-154 A.]
[Footnote 87: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 154 B, 155 C. [Greek: kata\ dê\
pa/nta tau=ta, to\ e(\n au)to/ te au(tou= kai\ tô=n a)/llôn
presbu/teron kai\ neô/teron e)/sti te kai\ gi/gnetai, kai\ ou(/te
presbu/teron ou(/te neô/teron ou(/t' e)/stin ou(/te gi/gnetai
ou(/te au(tou= ou(/te tô=n a)/llôn.]]
[Footnote 88: Plato, Parmenid. p. 155 C-D.]
Here Parmenides finishes the long Demonstratio Secunda, which
completes the first Antinomy. The last conclusion of all, with
which it winds up, is the antithesis of that with which the first
Demonstration wound up: affirming (what the conclusion of the
first had denied) that Unum is thinkable, perceivable, nameable,
knowable. Comparing the second Demonstration with the first, we
see--That the first, taking its initial step, with a negative
proposition, carries us through a series of conclusions every one
of which is negative (like those of the second figure of the
Aristotelian syllogism):--That whereas the conclusions professedly
established in the first Demonstration are all in _Neither_ (Unum
is neither in itself nor in any thing else--neither at rest nor in
motion--neither the same with itself nor different from itself,
&c.), the conclusions of the second Demonstration are all in
_Both_ (Unum is both in motion and at rest, both in itself and in
other things, both the same with itself and different from
itself):--That in this manner, while the first Demonstration
denies both of two opposite propositions, the second affirms them
both.
[Side-note: Startling paradox--Open offence against logical
canon--No logical canon had then been laid down.]
Such a result has an air of startling paradox. We find it shown,
respecting various pairs of contradictory propositions, first,
that both are false--next, that both are true. This offends doubly
against the logical canon, which declares, that of two
contradictory propositions, one must be true, the other must be
false. We must remember, that in the Platonic age, there existed
no systematic logic--no analysis or classification of
propositions--no recognised distinction between such as were
contrary, and such as were contradictory. The Platonic Parmenides
deals with propositions which are, to appearance at least,
contradictory: and we are brought, by two different roads, first
to the rejection of both, next to the admission of both.[89]
[Footnote 89: Prantl (in his Geschichte der Logik, vol. i. s. 3,
pp. 70-71-73) maintains, if I rightly understand him, not only
that Plato did not adopt the _principium identitatis et
contradictionis_ as the basis of his reasonings, but that one of
Plato's express objects was to demonstrate the contrary of it,
partly in the Philêbus, but especially in the Parmenides:--
"Eine arge Täuschung ist es, zu glauben, dass das principium
identitatis et contradictionis oberstes logisches Princip des
Plato sei . . Es ist gerade eine Hauptaufgabe, welche sich Plato
stellen musste, die Coexistenz der Gegensätze nachzuweisen, wie
diess bekanntlich im Philebus und _besonders im Parmenides_
geschieht."
According to this view, the Antinomies in the Parmenides are all
of them good proofs, and the conclusions of all of them, summed up
as they are in the final sentence of the dialogue, constitute an
addition to the positive knowledge of Sokrates. I confess that
this to me is unintelligible. I understand these Antinomies as
[Greek: a)pori/ai] to be cleared up, but in no other character.
Prantl speaks (p. 73) of "die antinomische Begründung der
Ideenlehre im Parmenides," &c. This is the same language as that
used by Zeller, upon which I have already remarked.]
[Side-note: Demonstration third--Attempt to reconcile the
contradiction of Demonstrations I. and II.]
How can this be possible? How can these four propositions all be
true--_Unum est Unum_--_Unum est Multa_--_Unum non est
Unum_--_Unum non est Multa_? Plato suggests a way out of the difficulty,
in that which he gives as Demonstration 3. It has been shown that
Unum "partakes of time"--was, is, and will be. The propositions
are all true, but true at different times: one at this time,
another at that time.[90] Unum acquires and loses existence,
essence, and other attributes: _now_, it exists and is
Unum--_before_, it did not exist and was not Unum: so too it is
alternately like and unlike, in motion and at rest. But how is
such alternation or change intelligible? At each time, whether
present or past, it must be either in motion or at rest: at no
time, neither present nor past, can it be _neither_ in motion
_nor_ at rest. It cannot, while in motion, change to rest--nor,
while at rest, change to motion. No time can be assigned for the
change: neither the present, nor the past, nor the future: how
then can the change occur at all?[91]
[Footnote 90: This is a distinction analogous to that which Plato
points out in the Sophistes (pp. 242-243) between the theories of
Herakleitus and Empedoklês.]
[Footnote 91: Plato, Parmenid. p. 156.]
[Side-note: Plato's imagination of the Sudden or
Instantaneous--Breaches or momentary stoppages in the course of time.]
To this question the Platonic Parmenides finds an answer in what
he calls the _Sudden_ or the _Instantaneous_: an anomalous nature
which lies out of, or apart from, the course of time, being
neither past, present, nor future. That which changes, changes at
once and suddenly: at an instant when it is neither in motion nor
at rest. This _Suddenly_ is a halt or break in the flow of
time:[92] an extra-temporal condition, in which the subject has no
existence, no attributes--though it revives again forthwith
clothed with its new attributes: a point of total negation or
annihilation, during which the subject with all its attributes
disappears. At this interval (the _Suddenly_) all predicates may
be truly denied, but none can be truly affirmed.[93] Unum is
neither at rest, nor in motion--neither like nor unlike--neither
the same with itself nor different from itself--neither Unum nor
Multa. Both predicates and Subject vanish. Thus all the negations
of the first Demonstration are justified. Immediately before the
_Suddenly_, or point of change, Unum was in motion--immediately
after the change, it is at rest: immediately before, it was
like--equal--the same with itself--Unum, &c.--immediately after,
it is unlike--unequal--different from itself--Multa, &c. And thus
the double and contradictory affirmative predications, of which the
second Demonstration is composed, are in their turn made good, as
successive in time. This discovery of the extra-temporal point
_Suddenly_, enables Parmenides to uphold both the double negative
of the first Demonstration, and the double affirmative of the
second.
[Footnote 92: Plato, Parmenid. p. 156 E. [Greek: a)ll' ê(
_e)xai/phnês au(/tê phu/sis a)/topo/s tis e)gka/thêtai metaxu\
tê=s kinê/seô/s te kai\ sta/seôs_, e)n chro/nô| ou)deni\ ou)=sa,
kai\ ei)s tau/tên dê\ kai\ e)k tau/tês to/ te kinou/menon
metaba/llei e)pi\ to\ e(sta/nai, kai\ to\ e(sto\s e)pi\ to\
kinei=sthai. . . . kai\ to\ e(\n dê/, ei)/per e(/stêke/ te kai\
kinei=tai, metaba/lloi a)\n e)ph' e(ka/tera; mo/nôs ga\r a)\n
ou(/tôs a)mpho/tera poioi=; metaba/llon d' e)xai/phnês
metaba/llei, kai\ o(/te metaba/llei, e)n ou)deni\ chro/nô| a)\n
ei)/ê, ou)de\ kinoi=t' a)\n to/te, ou)d' a)\n stai/ê.]
[Greek: To\ e)xai/phnês--ê( e)xai/phnês phu/sis a)/topo/s
tis]--may be compared to an infinitesimal; analogous to what is
recognised in the theory of the differential calculus.]
[Footnote 93: This appears to be an illustration of the doctrine
which Lassalle ascribes to Herakleitus; perpetual implication of
negativity and positivity--des Nichtseins mit dem Sein: perpetual
absorption of each particular into the universal; and perpetual
reappearance as an opposite particular. See the two elaborate
volumes of Lassalle upon Herakleitus, especially i. p. 358, ii. p.
258. He scarcely however takes notice of the Platonic Parmenides.
Some of the Stoics considered [Greek: to\ nu=n] as [Greek:
mêde/n]--and nothing in time to be real except [Greek: to\
parô|chêko\s] and [Greek: to\ me/llon] (Plutarch, De Commun.
Notitiis contra Stoicos, p. 1081 D).]
[Side-note: Review of the successive pairs of Demonstrations or
Antinomies in each, the first proves the Neither, the second
proves the Both.]
The theory here laid down in the third Demonstration respecting
this extra-temporal point--the _Suddenly_--deserves all the more
attention, because it applies not merely to the first and second
Demonstration which precede it, but also to the fourth and fifth,
the sixth and seventh, the eighth and ninth, which follow it. I
have already observed, that the first and second Demonstration
form a corresponding pair, branching off from the same root or
hypothetical proposition (at least the same in terms), respecting
the subject _Unum_; and destined to prove, one the Neither, the
other the Both, of several different predicates. So also the
fourth and fifth form a pair applying to the subject Cætera; and
destined to prove, that from the same hypothetical root--_Si Unum
est_--we can deduce the Neither as well as the Both, of various
predicates of Cætera. When we pass on to the four last
Demonstrations, we find that in all four, the hypothesis _Si Unum
non est_ is substituted for that of _Si Unum est_: but the
parallel couples, with the corresponding purpose, are still kept
up. The sixth and seventh apply to the subject _Unum_, and
demonstrate respecting that subject (proceeding from the
hypothesis _Si Unum non est_) first the _Both_, then the
_Neither_, of various predicates: the eighth and ninth arrive at
the same result, respecting the subject _Cætera_. And a sentence
at the close sums up in few words the result of all the four pairs
(1-2, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9, that is, of all the Demonstrations excepting
the third)--the Neither and the Both respecting all of them.
[Side-note: The third Demonstration is mediatorial but not
satisfactory--The hypothesis of the Sudden or Instantaneous found
no favour.]
To understand these nine Demonstrations properly, therefore, we
ought to consider eight among them (1-2, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9) as four
Antinomies, or couples establishing dialectic contradictions: and
the third as a mediator satisfactory between the
couples--announced as if it reconciled the contradictions of the first
Antinomy, and capable of being adapted, in the same character with
certain modifications, to the second, third, and fourth Antinomy.
Whether it reconciles them successfully--in other words, whether
the third Demonstration will itself hold good--is a different
question. It will be found to involve the singular and paradoxical
(Plato's own phrase) doctrine of the extra-temporal
_Suddenly_--conceiving Time as a Discretum and not a Continuum. This
doctrine is intended by Plato here as a means of rendering the fact
of change logically conceivable and explicable. He first states
briefly the difficulty (which we know to have been largely
insisted on by Diodorus Kronus and other Megarics) of logically
explaining the fact of change--and then enunciates this doctrine
as the solution. We plainly see that it did not satisfy
others--for the puzzle continued to be a puzzle long after--and that
it did not even satisfy Plato, except at the time when he composed
the Parmenides--since neither the doctrine itself (the
extra-temporal break or transition) nor the very peculiar phrase
in which it is embodied ([Greek: to\ e)xai/phnês, a)/topo/s tis
phu/sis]) occur in any of his other dialogues. If the doctrine
were really tenable, it would have been of use in dialectic, and
as such, would have been called in to remove the theoretical
difficulties raised among dialectical disputants, respecting time
and motion. Yet Plato does not again advert to it, either in
Sophistes or Timæus, in both of which there is special demand for
it.[94] Aristotle, while he adopts a doctrine like it (yet without
employing the peculiar phrase [Greek: to\ e)xai/phnês]) to explain
qualitative change, does not admit the same either as to
quantitative change, or as to local motion, or as to generation
and destruction.[95] The doctrine served the purpose of the
Platonic Parmenides, as ingenious, original, and provocative to
intellectual effort: but it did not acquire any permanent footing
in Grecian dialectics.
[Footnote 94: Steinhart represents this idea of [Greek: to\
e)xai/phnês]--the extra-temporal break or zero of transition--as
an important progress made by Plato, compared with the Theætêtus,
because it breaks down the absoluten Gegensatz between Sein and
Werden, Ruhe and Bewegung (Einleitung zum Parmen. p. 309).
Surely, if Plato had considered it a progress, we should have seen
the same idea repeated in various other dialogues--which is not
the case.]
[Footnote 95: Aristotel. Physic. p. 235, b. 32, with the Scholion
of Simplikius, p. 410, b. 20, Brandis.
The discussion occupies two or three pages of Aristotle's Physica.
In regard to [Greek: a)lloi/ôsis] or qualitative change, he
recognised what he called [Greek: a)thro/an metabolê/n]--a change
_all at once_, which occupied no portion of time. It is plain,
however, that even his own scholars Theophrastus and Eudemus had
great difficulty in accepting the doctrine; see Scholia, pp.
409-410-411, Brandis.]
The two last Antinomies, or four last Demonstrations, have, in
common, for their point of departure, the negative proposition,
_Si Unum non est_: and are likewise put together in parallel
couples (6-7, 8-9), a Demonstration and a Counter-Demonstration--a
Both and a Neither: first with reference to the subject
_Unum_--next with reference to the subject _Cætera_.
[Side-note: Review of the two last Antinomies. Demonstrations VI.
and VII.]
_Si Unum est_--_Si Unum non est_. Even from such a proposition as
the first of these, we might have thought it difficult to deduce
any string of consequences--which Plato has already done: from
such a proposition as the second, not merely difficult, but
impossible. Nevertheless the ingenious dialectic of Plato
accomplishes the task, and elicits from each proposition a Both,
and a Neither, respecting several predicates of Unum as well as of
Cætera. When you say _Unum non est_ (so argues the Platonic
Parmenides in Demonstration 6), you deny existence respecting
Unum: but the proposition _Unum non est_, is distinguishable from
_Magnitudo non est_--_Parvitudo non est_--and such like:
propositions wherein the subject is different, though the
predicate is the same: so that _Unum non Ens_ is still a Something
knowable, and distinguishable from other things--a logical subject
of which various other predicates may be affirmed, though the
predicate of existence cannot be affirmed.[96] It is both like and
unlike, equal and unequal--like and equal to itself unlike and
unequal to other things.[97] These its predicates being all true,
are also real existences: so that Unum partakes _quodam modo_ in
existence: though _Unum_ be _non-Ens_, nevertheless, _Unum non-Ens
est_. Partaking thus both of non-existence and of existence, it
changes: it both moves and is at rest: it is generated and
destroyed, yet is also neither generated nor destroyed.[98]
[Footnote 96: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 160-161 A. [Greek: ei)=nai me\n
dê\ tô=| e(ni\ ou)ch oi(=o/n te, ei)/per ge mê\ e)/sti, mete/chein
de\ pollô=n ou)de\n kôlu/ei, a)lla\ kai\ a)na/gkê, ei)/per to/ ge
e(\n e)kei=no kai\ mê\ a)/llo mê\ e)/stin. ei) me/ntoi mê/te to\
e(\n mê/t' _e)kei=no_ mê\ e)/stai, a)lla\ peri\ a)/llou tou o(
lo/gos, ou)de\ phthe/ggesthai dei= ou)de/n; ei) de\ to\ e(\n
e)kei=no kai\ mê\ a)/llo u(pokei=tai mê\ ei)=nai, kai\ tou=
_e)kei/nou_ kai\ a)/llôn pollô=n a)na/gkê au)tô=| metei=nai.]]
[Footnote 97: Plato, Parmenid. p. 161 C-D.]
[Footnote 98: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 162-163 A.
The steps by which these conclusions are made out are extremely
subtle, and hardly intelligible to me.]
Having thus deduced from the fundamental principle this string of
Both opposite predicates, the Platonic Parmenides reverts (in
Demonstration 7) to the same principium (_Si Unum non est_) to
deduce by another train of reasoning the Neither of these
predicates. When you say that _Unum non est_, you must mean that
it does not partake of existence in any way--absolutely and
without reserve. It therefore neither acquires nor loses
existence: it is neither generated nor destroyed: it is neither in
motion nor at rest: it partakes of nothing existent: it is neither
equal nor unequal--neither like nor unlike--neither great nor
little--neither this, nor that: neither the object of perception,
nor of knowledge, nor of opinion, nor of naming, nor of
debate.[99]
[Footnote 99: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 163-164 A.]
[Side-note: Demonstration VII. is founded upon the genuine doctrine
of Parmenides.]
These two last counter-demonstrations (6 and 7), forming the third
Antinomy, deserve attention in this respect--That the seventh is
founded upon the genuine Parmenidean or Eleatic doctrine about
Non-Ens, as not merely having no attributes, but as being
unknowable, unperceivable, unnameable: while the sixth is founded
upon a different apprehension of Non-Ens, which is explained and
defended by Plato in the Sophistes, as a substitute for, and
refutation of, the Eleatic doctrine.[100] According to Number 7,
when you deny, of Unum, the predicate existence, you deny of it
also all other predicates: and the name Unum is left without any
subject to apply to. This is the Eleatic dogma. Unum having been
declared to be Non-Ens, is (like Non-Ens) neither knowable nor
nameable. According to Number 6, the proposition _Unum est
non-Ens_, does not carry with it any such consequences. Existence
is only one predicate, which may be denied of the subject Unum, but
which, when denied, does not lead to the denial of all other
predicates--nor, therefore, to the loss of the subject itself.
Unum still remains Unum, knowable, and different from other
things. Upon this first premiss are built up several other
affirmations; so that we thus arrive circuitously at the
affirmation of existence, in a certain way: _Unum_, though
non-existent, does nevertheless exist _quodam modo_. This coincides
with that which the Eleatic stranger seeks to prove in the
Sophistes, against Parmenides.
[Footnote 100: Plato, Sophistes, pp. 258-259.]
[Side-note: Demonstrations VI. and VII. considered--Unwarrantable
steps in the reasoning--The fundamental premiss differently
interpreted, though the same in words.]
If we compare the two foregoing counter-demonstrations (7 and 6),
we shall see that the negative results of the seventh follow
properly enough from the assumed premisses: but that the
affirmative results of the sixth are not obtained without very
unwarrantable jumps in the reasoning, besides its extreme
subtlety. But apart from this defect, we farther remark that here
also (as in Numbers 1 and 2) the fundamental principle assumed is
in terms the same, in signification materially different. The
signification of _Unum non est_, as it is construed in Number 7,
is the natural one, belonging to the words: but as construed in
Number 6, the meaning of the predicate is altogether effaced (as
it had been before in Number 1): we cannot tell what it is which
is really denied about Unum. As, in Number 1, the proposition
_Unum est_ is so construed as to affirm nothing except _Unum est
Unum_--so in Number 7, the proposition _Unum non est_ is so
construed as to deny nothing except _Unum non est Unum_, yet
conveying along with such denial a farther affirmation--_Unum non
est Unum, sed tamen est aliquid scibile, differens ab aliis_.[101]
Here this _aliquid scibile_ is assumed as a substratum underlying
_Unum_, and remaining even when Unum is taken away: contrary to
the opinion--that Unum was a separate nature and the fundamental
Subject of all--which Aristotle announces as having been held by
Plato.[102] There must be always some meaning (the Platonic
Parmenides argues) attached to the word Unum, even when you talk
of _Unum non Ens_: and that meaning is equivalent to _Aliquid
scibile, differens ab aliis_. From this he proceeds to evolve,
step by step, though often in a manner obscure and inconclusive,
his series of contradictory affirmations respecting Unum.
[Footnote 101: Plato, Parmenid. p. 160 C.]
[Footnote 102: Aristot. Metaph. B. 1001, a. 6-20.]
The last couple of Demonstrations--8 and 9--composing the fourth
Antinomy, are in some respects the most ingenious and singular of
all the nine. Si _Unum non est_, what is true about Cætera? The
eighth demonstrates the _Both_ of the affirmative predicates, the
ninth proves the _Neither_.
[Side-note: Demonstrations VIII. and IX.--Analysis of Demonstration
VIII.]
Si _Unum non est_ (is the argument of the eighth), Cætera must
nevertheless somehow still be Cætera: otherwise you could not talk
about Cætera.[103] (This is an argument like that in Demonstration
6: What is talked about must exist, somehow.) But if Cætera can be
named and talked about, they must be different from something,--and
from something, which is also different from them. What can
this Something be? Not certainly Unum: for Unum, by the
Hypothesis, does not exist, and cannot therefore be the term of
comparison. _Cætera_ therefore must be different among themselves
and from each other. But they cannot be compared with each other
by units: for Unum does not exist. They must therefore be compared
with each other by heaps or multitudes: each of which will appear
at first sight to be an unit, though it be not an unit in reality.
There will be numbers of such heaps, each in appearance one,
though not in reality:[104] numbers odd and even, great and
little, in appearance: heaps appearing to be greater and less than
each other, and equal to each other, though not being really so.
Each of these heaps will appear to have a beginning, middle, and
end, yet will not really have any such: for whenever you grasp any
one of them in your thoughts, there will appear another beginning
before the beginning,[105] another end after the end, another
centre more centrical than the centre,--minima ever decreasing
because you cannot reach any stable unit. Each will be a heap
without any unity; looking like one, at a distance,--but when you
come near, each a boundless and countless multitude. They will
thus appear one and many, like and unlike, equal and unequal, at
rest and moving, separate and coalescing: in short, invested with
an indefinite number of opposite attributes.[106]
[Footnote 103: Plato, Parmenid. p. 164 B. [Greek: A)/lla me/n pou
dei= au)ta\ ei)=nai; ei) ga\r mêde\ a)/lla e)sti/n, ou)k a)\n
peri\ tô=n a)/llôn le/goito.]]
[Footnote 104: Plato, Parmenid. p. 164 D. [Greek: Ou)kou=n polloi\
o)/gkoi e)/santai, ei)=s e(/kastos phaino/menos, ô)\n de\ ou)/,
ei)/per e(\n mê\ e)/stai. Ou(/tôs.]]
[Footnote 105: Plato, Parmenid. p. 165 A. [Greek: O(/ti a)ei\
au)tô=n o(/tan ti/s ti la/bê| tê=| dianoi/a| ô(/s ti tou/tôn o(/n,
pro/ te tê=s a)rchê=s a)/llê a)ei\ phai/netai a)rchê/, meta/ te
tê\n teleutê\n e(te/ra u(poleipome/nê teleutê/, e(/n te tô=|
me/sô| a)/lla mesai/tera tou= me/sou, smikro/tera de\ dia\ to\ mê\
du/nasthai e(no\s au)tô=n e(ka/stou lamba/nesthai, a)/te ou)k
o)/ntos tou= e(no/s.]]
[Footnote 106: Plato, Parmenid. p. 165 E. Compare p. 158 E.
[Greek: toi=s a)/llois dê\ tou= e(no\s. . . . ê( de\ au)tô=n
phu/sis kath' e(auta\ a)peiri/an (pa/resche).]]
[Side-note: Demonstration VIII. is very subtle and Zenonian.]
This Demonstration 8, with its strange and subtle chain of
inferences, purporting to rest upon the admission of Cætera
without Unum, brings out the antithesis of the Apparent and the
Real, which had not been noticed in the preceding demonstrations.
Demonstration 8 is in its character Zenonian. It probably
coincides with the proof which Zeno is reported (in the earlier
half of this dialogue) to have given against the existence of any
real Multa. If you assume Multa (Zeno argued), they must be both
like and unlike, and invested with many other opposite attributes;
but this is impossible; therefore the assumption is untrue.[107]
Those against whom Zeno reasoned, contended for real Multa, and
against a real Unum. Zeno probably showed, and our eighth
Demonstration here shows also,--that Multa under this supposition
are nothing real, but an assemblage of indefinite, ever-variable,
contradictory appearances: an [Greek: A)/peiron], Infinite, or
Chaos: an object not real and absolute, but relative and variable
according to the point of view of the subject.
[Footnote 107: Plato, Parmenid. p. 127 E; compare this with the
close of the eighth Demonstration, p. 165 E--[Greek: ei) e(no\s
mê\ o)/ntos polla\ e)/stin].]
[Side-note: Demonstration IX. _Neither_ following _Both_.]
To the eighth Demonstration, ingenious as it is, succeeds a
countervailing reversal in the ninth: the Neither following the
Both. The fundamental supposition is in terms the same. _Si Unum
non est_, what is to become of _Cætera_? _Cætera_ are not _Unum_:
yet neither are they _Multa_: for if there were any Multa, Unum
would be included in them. If none of the Multa were Unum, all of
them would be nothing at all, and there would be no Multa. If
therefore Unum be not included in Cætera, Cætera would be neither
Unum nor Multa: nor would they appear to be either Unum or Multa:
for Cætera can have no possible communion with Non-Entia: nor can
any of the Non-Entia be present along with any of Cætera--since
Non-Entia have no parts. We cannot therefore conceive or represent
to ourselves Non-Ens as along with or belonging to Cætera.
Therefore, _Si Unum non est_, nothing among _Cætera_ is conceived
either as Unum or as Multa: for to conceive Multa without Unum is
impossible. It thus appears, _Si Unum non est_, that Cætera
neither are Unum nor Multa. Nor are they conceived either as Unum
or Multa--either as like or as unlike--either as the same or as
different--either as in contact or as apart.--In short, all those
attributes which in the last preceding Demonstration were shown
_to belong to them_ in appearance, are now shown _not to belong_
to them either in appearance or in reality.[108]
[Footnote 108: Plato, Parmenid. p. 166 A-B. [Greek: E(\n a)/ra ei)
mê\ e)/sti, ta)/lla ou)/te e)/stin ou)/te doxa/zetai e(\n ou)/te
polla/. . . . Ou)/d' a)/ra o(/moia ou)de\ a)no/moia. . . . Ou)de\
mê\n ta\ au)ta/ ge ou)d' e(/tera, ou)de\ a(pto/mena ou)de\
chôri/s, _ou)de\ a)/ll' o(/sa e)n toi=s pro/sthen diê/lthomen_]
(compare [Greek: dielthei=n], p. 165 E) [Greek: _ô(s phaino/mena
au)ta/, tou/tôn ou)/te ti e)/stin ou)/te phai/netai ta)/lla, e(\n
ei) mê\ e)/stin_.]]
[Side-note: Concluding words of the Parmenides--Declaration that he
has demonstrated the Both and the Neither of many different
propositions.]
Here we find ourselves at the close of the Parmenides. Plato
announces his purpose to be, to elicit contradictory conclusions,
by different trains of reasoning, out of the same fundamental
assumption.[109] He declares, in the concluding words, that--on
the hypothesis of _Unum est_, as well as on that of _Unum non
est_--he has succeeded in demonstrating the Both and the Neither
of many distinct propositions, respecting Unum and respecting
Cætera.
[Footnote 109: Compare, with the passage cited in the last note,
another passage, p. 159 B, at the beginning of Demonstration 5.
[Greek: Ou)kou=n tau=ta me\n ê)/dê e)ô=men ô(s phanera/,
e)piskopô=men de\ pa/lin, e(\n ei) e)/stin, a)=ra _kai\ ou)ch
ou(/tôs e)/chei ta)/lla tou= e(no\s ê)\ ou(/tô mo/non_?]
Here the purpose to prove [Greek: _ou)ch ou(/tôs_], immediately on
the heels of [Greek: _ou(/tôs_], is plainly enunciated.]
[Side-note: Comparison of the conclusion of the Parmenides to an
enigma of the Republic. Difference. The constructor of the enigma
adapted its conditions to a foreknown solution. Plato did not.]
The close of the Parmenides, as it stands here, may be fairly
compared to the enigma announced by Plato in his Republic--"A man
and no man, struck and did not strike, with a stone and no stone,
a bird and no bird, sitting upon wood and no wood".[110] This is
an enigma, propounded for youthful auditors to guess: stimulating
their curiosity, and tasking their intelligence to find it out. As
far as I can see, the puzzling antinomies in the Parmenides have
no other purpose. They drag back the forward and youthful Sokrates
from affirmative dogmatism to negative doubt and embarrassment.
There is however this difference between the enigma in the
Republic, and the Antinomies in the Parmenides. The constructor of
the enigma had certainly a preconceived solution to which he
adapted the conditions of his problem: whereas we have no
sufficient ground for asserting that the author of the Antinomies
had any such solution present or operative in his mind. How much
of truth Plato may himself have recognised, or may have wished
others to recognise, in them, we have no means of determining. We
find in them many equivocal propositions and unwarranted
inferences--much blending of truth with error, intentionally or
unintentionally. The veteran Parmenides imposes the severance of
the two, as a lesson, upon his youthful hearers Sokrates and
Aristoteles.
[Footnote 110: Plato, Republ. v. 479 C. The allusion was to an
eunuch knocking down a bat seated upon a reed. [Greek: Ai)no/s tis
e)/stin ô(s a)nê/r te kou)k a)nê/r, O)/rnitha/ te kou)k o)/rnith'
i)dô/n te kou)k i)dô/n, E)pi\ xu/lou te kou) xu/lou kathême/nên
Li/thô| te kou) li/thô| ba/loi te kou) ba/loi.]
I read with astonishment the amount of positive philosophy which a
commentator like Steinhart extracts from the concluding enigma of
the Parmenides, and which he even affirms that no attentive reader
of the dialogue can possibly miss (Einleitung zum Parmenides, pp.
302-303).]
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THEÆTETUS.
[Side-note: Subjects and personages in the Theætêtus.]
In this dialogue, as in the Parmenides immediately preceding,
Plato dwells upon the intellectual operations of mind: introducing
the ethical and emotional only in a partial and subordinate way.
The main question canvassed is, What is Knowledge--Cognition--Science?
After a long debate, turning the question over in many
distinct points of view, and examining three or four different
answers to the question--all these answers are successively
rejected, and the problem remains unsolved.
The two persons who converse with Sokrates are, Theodôrus, an
elderly man, eminent as a geometrician, astronomer, &c., and
teaching those sciences--and Theætêtus, a young man of great merit
and still greater promise: acute, intelligent, and
inquisitive--high-principled and courageous in the field, yet gentle
and conciliatory to all: lastly, resembling Sokrates in physiognomy
and in the flatness of his nose. The dialogue is supposed to have
taken place during the last weeks of the life of Sokrates, when
his legal appearance as defendant is required to answer the
indictment of Melêtus, already entered in the official record.[1]
The dialogue is here read aloud to Eukleides of Megara and his
fellow-citizen Terpsion, by a slave of Eukleides: this last person
had recorded it in writing from narrative previously made to him
by Sokrates.[2] It is prefaced by a short discourse between
Eukleides and Terpsion, intended to attract our sympathy and
admiration towards the youthful Theætêtus.
[Footnote 1: Plato, Theætêt. ad fin. p. 210.]
[Footnote 2: Plato, Theætêt. i. pp. 142 E, 143 A. Plato hardly
keeps up the fiction about the time of this dialogue with perfect
consistency. When it took place, the indictment of Melêtus had
already been recorded: Sokrates breaks off the conversation for
the purpose of going to answer it: Eukleides hears the dialogue
from the mouth of Sokrates afterwards. "Immediately on getting
home to Megara" (says Eukleides) "I wrote down memoranda (of what
I had heard): then afterwards I called it back to my mind at
leisure, and as often as I visited Athens I questioned Sokrates
about such portions as I did not remember, and made corrections on
my return here, so that now nearly all the dialogue has been
written out."
Such a process would require longer time than is consistent with
the short remainder of the life of Sokrates. Socher indeed tries
to explain this by assuming a long interval between the indictment
and the trial, but this is noway satisfactory. (Ueber Platon's
Schriften, p. 251.)
Mr. Lewis Campbell, in the Preface to his very useful edition of
this dialogue (p. lxxi. Oxford, 1861), considers that the battle
in which Theætêtus is represented as having been wounded, is
probably meant for that battle in which Iphikrates and his
peltasts destroyed the Spartan Mora, B.C. 390: if not that, then
the battle at the Isthmus of Corinth against Epaminondas. B.C.
369. Schleiermacher in his Einleitung to the dialogue (p. 185)
seems to prefer the supposition of some earlier battle or skirmish
under Iphikrates. The point can hardly be determined. Still less
can we fix the date at which the dialogue was written, though the
mention of the battle of Corinth certifies that it was later than
394 B.C. Ast affirms confidently that it was the first dialogue
composed by Plato after the Phædon, which last was composed
immediately after the death of Sokrates (Ast, Platon's Leben, &c.,
p. 192). I see no ground for this affirmation. Most of the
commentators rank it among the dialectical dialogues, which they
consider to belong to a later period of Plato's life than the
ethical, but to an earlier period than the constructive, such as
Republic, Timæus, &c. Most of them place the Theætêtus in one or
other of the years between 393-383 B.C., though they differ much
among themselves whether it is to be considered as later or
earlier than other dialogues--Kratylus, Euthydemus, Menon,
Gorgias, &c. (Stallbaum, Proleg. Theæt. pp. 6-10; Steinhart,
Einleit. zum Theæt. pp. 100-213.) Munk and Ueberweg, on the
contrary, place the Theætêtus at a date considerably later,
subsequent to 368 B.C. Munk assigns it to 358 or 357 B.C. after
Plato's last return from Sicily (Munk, Die natürliche Ordnung der
Platon. Schr. pp. 357-597: Ueberweg, Ueber die Aechtheit der
Platon. Schr. pp. 228-236).]
[Side-note: Question raised by Sokrates--What is knowledge or
Cognition? First answer of Theætêtus, enumerating many different
cognitions. Corrected by Sokrates.]
In answer to the question put by Sokrates--What is Knowledge or
Cognition? Theætêtus at first replies--That there are many and
diverse cognitions:--of geometry, of arithmetic, of arts and
trades, such as shoemaking, joinery, &c. Sokrates points out (as
in the Menon, Hippias Major, and other dialogues) that such an
answer involves a misconception of the question: which was
general, and required a general answer, setting forth the
characteristic common to all cognitions. No one can know what
cognition is in shoemaking or any particular case--unless he first
knows what is cognition generally.[3] Specimens of suitable
answers to general questions are then given (or of definition of a
general term), in the case of clay--and of numbers square and
oblong.[4] I have already observed more than once how important an
object it was with Plato to impress upon his readers an exact and
adequate conception of the meaning of general terms, and the
proper way of defining them. For this purpose he brings into
contrast the misconceptions likely to arise in the minds of
persons not accustomed to dialectic.
[Footnote 3: Plato, Theætêt. p. 147 A.
[Greek: Ou)d' a)/ra e)pistê/mên u(podêma/tôn suni/êsin, o(
e)pistê/mên mê\ ei)dio/s? Ou) ga/r.]]
[Footnote 4: Plato, Theætêt. p. 148. Oblong ([Greek: promê/keis])
numbers are such as can be produced only from two unequal factors.
The explanation of this difficult passage, requiring us to keep in
mind the geometrical conception of numbers usual among the Greek
mathematicians, will be found clearly given in Mr. Campbell's
edition of this dialogue, pp. 20-22.]
[Side-note: Preliminary conversation before the second answer is
given. Sokrates describes his own peculiar efficacy--mental
obstetric--He cannot teach, but he can evolve knowledge out of
pregnant minds.]
Theætêtus, before he attempts a second answer, complains how much
the subject had embarrassed him. Impressed with what he had heard
about the interrogatories of Sokrates, he had tried to solve this
problem: but he had not been able to satisfy himself with any
attempted solution--nor yet to relinquish the search altogether.
"You are in distress, Theætêtus" (observes Sokrates), "because you
are not empty, but pregnant.[5] You have that within you, of which
you need to be relieved; and you cannot be relieved without
obstetric aid. It is my peculiar gift from the Gods to afford such
aid, and to stimulate the parturition of pregnant minds which
cannot of themselves bring forth what is within them.[6] I can
produce no truth myself: but I can, by my art inherited from my
mother the midwife Phænaretê, extract truth from others, and test
the answers given by others: so as to determine whether such
answers are true and valuable, or false and worthless. I can teach
nothing: I only bring out what is already struggling in the minds
of youth: and if there be nothing within them, my procedure is
unavailing. My most important function is, to test the answers
given, how far they are true or false. But most people, not
comprehending my drift, complain of me as a most eccentric person,
who only makes others sceptical. They reproach me, and that truly
enough, with always asking questions, and never saying any thing
of my own: because I have nothing to say worth hearing.[7] The
young companions who frequent my society, often suffer
long-continued pains of parturition night and day, before they can
be delivered of what is within them. Some, though apparently stupid
when they first come to me, make great progress, if my divine
coadjutor is favourable to them: others again become tired of me,
and go away too soon, so that the little good which I have done
them becomes effaced. Occasionally, some of these impatient
companions wish to return to me afterwards--but my divine sign
forbids me to receive them: where such obstacle does not
intervene, they begin again to make progress."[8]
[Footnote 5: Plato, Theætêt. p. 148 E. [Greek: ô)di/neis, dia\ to\
mê\ keno\s a)ll' e)gku/môn ei)=nai.]]
[Footnote 6: Plato, Theætêt. p. 149 A, p. 150 A.]
[Footnote 7: Plato, Theætêt. p. 149 A. [Greek: oi( de/, a)/te ou)k
ei)do/tes, tou=to me\n ou) le/gousi peri\ e)mou=, o(/ti de\
a)topô/tato/s ei)mi, kai\ poiô= tou\s a)nthrô/pous a)porei=n.] 150
B-C [Greek: me/giston de\ tou=t' e(/ni tê=| ê(mete/ra| te/chnê|,
basani/zein dunato\n ei)=nai panti\ tro/pô|, po/teron ei)/dôlon
ê)\ pseu=dos a)poti/ktei tou= ne/ou ê( dianoi/a, ê)\ go/nimo/n te
kai\ a)lêthe/s; e)pei\ to/de ge kai\ e)moi\ u(pa/rchei o(/per
tai=s mai/ais; a)/gono/s ei)mi sophi/as], &c.]
[Footnote 8: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 150 E, 151 A. [Greek: e)ni/ois
me\n to\ gigno/meno/n moi daimo/nion a)pokôlu/ei xunei=nai,
e)ni/ois de\ e)a=|; kai\ pa/lin ou(=toi e)pidido/asin.]
We here see (what I have already adverted to in reviewing the
Theagês, vol. ii. ch. xv. pp. 105-7) the character of mystery,
unaccountable and unpredictable in its working on individuals,
with which Plato invests the colloquy of Sokrates.]
[Side-note: Ethical basis of the cross-examination of Sokrates--He
is forbidden to pass by falsehood without challenge.]
This passage, while it forcibly depicts the peculiar intellectual
gift of Sokrates, illustrates at the same time the Platonic manner
of describing, full of poetry and metaphor. Cross-examination by
Sokrates communicated nothing new, but brought out what lay buried
in the mind of the respondent, and tested the value of his
answers. It was applicable only to minds endowed and productive:
but for them it was indispensable, in order to extract what they
were capable of producing, and to test its value when extracted.
"Do not think me unkind," (says Sokrates,) "or my procedure
useless, if my scrutiny exposes your answers as fallacious. Many
respondents have been violently angry with me for doing so: but I
feel myself strictly forbidden either to admit falsehood, or to
put aside truth."[9] Here we have a suitable prelude to a dialogue
in which four successive answers are sifted and rejected, without
reaching, even at last, any satisfactory solution.
[Footnote 9: Plato, Theætêt. p. 151 D.]
[Side-note: Answer of Theætêtus--Cognition is sensible perception:
Sokrates says that this is the same doctrine as the _Homo Mensura_
laid down by Protagoras, and that both are in close affinity with
the doctrines of Homer, Herakleitus, Empedoklês, &c., all except
Parmenides.]
The first answer given by Theætêtus is--"Cognition is sensation
(or sensible perception)". Upon this answer Sokrates remarks, that
it is the same doctrine, though in other words, as what was laid
down by Protagoras--"Man is the measure of all things: of things
existent, that they exist: of things non-existent, that they do
not exist. As things appear to me, so they are to me: as they
appear to you, so they are to you."[10] Sokrates then proceeds to
say, that these two opinions are akin to, or identical with, the
general view of nature entertained by Herakleitus, Empedoklês, and
other philosophers, countenanced moreover by poets like Homer and
Epicharmus. The philosophers here noticed (he continues), though
differing much in other respects, all held the doctrine that
nature consisted in a perpetual motion, change, or flux: that
there was no real Ens or permanent substratum, but perpetual
genesis or transition.[11] These philosophers were opposed to
Parmenides, who maintained (as I have already stated in a previous
chapter) that there was nothing real except Ens--One, permanent,
and unchangeable: that all change was unreal, apparent, illusory,
not capable of being certainly known, but only matter of uncertain
opinion or estimation.
[Footnote 10: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 151 E--152 A.
_Theætêt._ [Greek: ou)k a)/llo ti/ e)stin e)pistê/mê ê)\
ai)/sthêsis. . . .]
_Sokrat._ [Greek: Kinduneu/eis me/ntoi lo/gon ou) phau=lon
ei)rêke/nai peri\ e)pistê/mês, a)ll' o(/n e)/lege kai\
Prôtago/ras; _tro/pon de/ tina a)/llon ei)/rêke ta\ au)ta\ tau=ta.
Phêsi\ ga/r pou--Pa/ntôn chrêma/tôn me/tron a)/nthrôpon ei)=nai,
tô=n me\n o)/ntôn, ô(s e)/sti--tô=n de\ mê\ o)/ntôn, ô(s ou)k
e)/stin._ A)ne/gnôkas ga/r pou?]
_Theætêt._ [Greek: A)ne/gnôka kai\ polla/kis.]
_Sokrat._ [Greek: Ou)kou=n ou(/tô pôs le/gei, ôs oi(=a me\n
e(/kasta e)moi\ phai/netai, toiau=ta me/n e)stin e)moi\--oi(=a de\
soi/, toiau=ta de\ au)= soi/; a)nthrôpos de\ su/ te ka)gô/.]
_Theætêt._ [Greek: Le/gei ga\r ou)=n ou(/tôs.]
Here Plato appears to transcribe the words of Protagoras (compare
p. 161 B, and the Kratylus, p. 386 A) which distinctly affirm the
doctrine of _Homo Mensura_--Man is the measure of all things,--but
do not affirm the doctrine, that knowledge is sensible perception.
The identification between the two doctrines is asserted by Plato
himself. It is Plato who asserts "that Protagoras affirmed the
same doctrine in another manner," citing afterwards the manner in
which he supposed Protagoras to affirm it. If there had been in
the treatise of Protagoras any more express or peremptory
affirmation of the doctrine "that knowledge is sensible
perception," Plato would probably have given it here.]
[Footnote 11: Plato, Theætêt. p. 152 E. [Greek: kai\ peri\ tou/tou
_pa/ntes e(xê=s oi( sophoi\ plê\n Parmeni/dou xumphere/sthôn_,
Prôtago/ras te kai\ Ê(ra/kleitos kai\ E)mpedoklê=s, kai\ tô=n
poiêtô=n oi( a)/kroi tê=s poiê/seôs e(kate/ras, kômô|di/as me\n
E)pi/charmos, tragô|di/as de\ O(/mêros.]]
[Side-note: Plato here blends together three distinct theories for
the purpose of confuting them; yet he also professes to urge what
can be said in favour of them. Difficulty of following his
exposition.]
The one main theme intended for examination here (as Sokrates[12]
expressly declares) is the doctrine--That Cognition is sensible
perception. Nevertheless upon all the three opinions, thus
represented as cognate or identical,[13] Sokrates bestows a
lengthened comment (occupying a half of the dialogue) in
conversation, principally with Theætêtus, but partly also with
Theodôrus. His strictures are not always easy to follow with
assurance, because he often passes with little notice from one to
the other of the three doctrines which he is examining: because he
himself, though really opposed to them, affects in part to take
them up and to suggest arguments in their favour: and further
because, disclaiming all positive opinion of his own, he sometimes
leaves us in doubt what is his real purpose--whether to expound,
or to deride, the opinions of others--whether to enlighten
Theætêtus, or to test his power of detecting fallacies.[14] We
cannot always distinguish between the ironical and the serious.
Lastly, it is a still greater difficulty, that we have not before
us either of the three opinions as set forth by their proper
supporters. There remains no work either of Protagoras or of
Herakleitus: so that we do not clearly know the subject matter
upon which Plato is commenting--nor whether these authors would
have admitted as just the view which he takes of their
opinions.[15]
[Footnote 12: Plato, Theætêt. p. 163 A.]
[Footnote 13: Plato, Theætêt. p. 160 D. _Sokrat._ [Greek:
Pagka/lôs a)/ra soi ei)/rêtai o(/ti e)pistê/mê ou)k a)/llo ti/
e)stin ê)\ ai)/sthêsis; kai\ _ei)s tau)to\n sumpe/ptôke_, kata\
me\n O(/mêron kai\ Ê(ra/kleiton kai\ pa=n to\ toiou=ton phu=lon,
oi(=on r(eu/mata kinei=sthai ta\ pa/nta--kata\ de\ Prôtago/ran
to\n sophô/taton, pa/ntôn chrêma/tôn a)/nthrôpon me/tron
ei)=nai--kata\ de\ Theai/têton, tou/tôn ou(=tôs e)cho/ntôn,
ai)/sthêsin e)pistê/mên gi/gnesthai.]]
[Footnote 14: See the answer of Theætêtus and the words of
Sokrates following, p. 157 C.]
[Footnote 15: It would be hardly necessary to remark, that when
Plato professes to put a pleading into the mouth of Protagoras
(pp. 165-166) we have no other real speaker than Plato himself, if
commentators did not often forget this. Steinhart indeed tells us
(Einleit. zum Theætêt. pp. 36-47) positively--that Plato in this
pleading keeps in the most accurate manner (auf das genaueste) to
the thoughts of Protagoras, perhaps even to his words. How
Steinhart can know this I am at a loss to understand. To me it
seems very improbable. The mere circumstance that Plato forces
into partnership three distinct theories, makes it probable that
he did not adhere to the thoughts or language of any one of them.]
[Side-note: The doctrine of Protagoras is completely distinct from
the other doctrines. The identification of them as one and the
same is only constructive--the interpretation of Plato himself.]
It is not improbable that the three doctrines, here put together
by Plato and subjected to a common scrutiny, may have been
sometimes held by the same philosophers. Nevertheless, the
language[16] of Plato himself shows us that Protagoras never
expressly affirmed knowledge to be sensible Perception: and that
the substantial identity between this doctrine, and the different
doctrine maintained by Protagoras, is to be regarded as a
construction put upon the two by Plato. That the theories of
Herakleitus and Empedokles differed materially from each other, we
know certainly: the theory of each, moreover, differed from the
doctrine of Protagoras--"Man is the measure of all things". How
this last doctrine was defended by its promulgator, we cannot say.
But the defence of it noway required him to maintain--That
knowledge is sensible perception. It might be consistently held by
one who rejected that definition of knowledge.[17] And though
Plato tries to refute both, yet the reasonings which he brings
against one do not at all tell against the other.
[Footnote 16: See Theætêt. p. 152 A. This is admitted (to be a
construction put by Plato himself) by Steinhart in his note 7, p.
214, Einleitung zum Theætêtus, though he says that Plato's
construction is the right one.]
[Footnote 17: Dr. Routh, in a note upon his edition of the
Euthydêmus of Plato (p. 286 C) observes:--"Protagoras docebat,
[Greek: Pa/ntôn chrêma/tôn me/tron a)/nthrôpon ei)=nai, tô=n me\n
o)/ntôn, ô(s e)/sti; tô=n de\ mê\ o)/ntôn, ô(s ou)k e)/sti.] Quâ
quidem opinione qualitatum sensilium sine animi perceptione
existentiam sustulisse videtur."
The definition here given by Routh is correct as far as it goes,
though too narrow. But it is sufficient to exhibit the Protagorean
doctrine as quite distinct from the other doctrine, [Greek: o(/ti
e)pistê/mê ou)k a)/llo ti/ e)stin ê)\ ai)/sthêsis.]]
[Side-note: Explanation of the doctrine of Protagoras--_Homo
Mensura_.]
The Protagorean doctrine--Man is the measure of all things--is
simply the presentation in complete view of a common
fact--uncovering an aspect of it which the received phraseology hides.
Truth and Falsehood have reference to some believing subject--and
the words have no meaning except in that relation. Protagoras
brings to view this subjective side of the same complex fact, of
which Truth and Falsehood denote the objective side. He refuses to
admit the object absolute--the pretended _thing in itself_--Truth
without a believer. His doctrine maintains the indefeasible and
necessary involution of the percipient mind in every perception--of
the concipient mind in every conception--of the cognizant mind
in every cognition. Farther, Protagoras acknowledges many distinct
believing or knowing Subjects: and affirms that every object known
must be relative to (or in his language, _measured by_) the
knowing Subject: that every _cognitum_ must have its _cognoscens_,
and every _cognoscibile_ its _cognitionis capax_: that the words
have no meaning unless this be supposed: that these two names
designate two opposite poles or aspects of the indivisible fact of
cognition--actual or potential--not two factors, which are in
themselves separate or separable, and which come together to make
a compound product. A man cannot in any case get clear of or
discard his own mind as a Subject. Self is necessarily
omnipresent; concerned in every moment of consciousness, and
equally concerned in all, though more distinctly attended to in
some than in others.[18] The Subject, self, or Ego, is that which
all our moments of consciousness have in common and alike: Object
is that in which they do or may differ--although some object or
other there always must be. The position laid down by
Descartes--_Cogito, ergo sum_--might have been stated with equal
truth--_Cogito, ergo est (cogitatum aliquid)_: _sum cogitans--est
cogitatum_--are two opposite aspects of the same indivisible
mental fact--_cogitatio_. In some cases, doubtless, the objective
aspect may absorb our attention, eclipsing the subjective: in
other cases, the subjective attracts exclusive notice: but in all
cases and in every act of consciousness, both are involved as
co-existent and correlative. That alone exists, to every man, which
stands, or is believed by him to be capable of standing, in some
mode of his consciousness as an Object correlative with himself as
a Subject. If he believes in its existence, his own believing mind
is part and parcel of such fact of belief, not less than the
object believed in: if he disbelieves it, his own disbelieving
mind is the like. Consciousness in all varieties has for its two
poles Subject and Object: there cannot be one of these poles
without the opposite pole--north without south--any more than
there can be concave without convex (to use a comparison familiar
with Aristotle), or front without back: which are not two things
originally different and coming into conjunction, but two
different aspects of the same indivisible fact.
[Footnote 18: In regard to the impossibility of carrying
abstraction so far as to discard the thinking subject, see Hobbes,
Computation or Logic, ch. vii. 1.
"In the teaching of natural philosophy I cannot begin better than
from _privation_; that is, from feigning the world to be
annihilated. But if such annihilation of all things be supposed,
it may perhaps be asked what would remain for any man (_whom only
I except from this universal annihilation of things_) to consider
as the subject of philosophy, or at all to reason upon; or what to
give names unto for ratiocination's sake.
"I say, therefore, there would remain to that man ideas of the
world, and of all such bodies as he had, before their
annihilation, seen with his eyes, or perceived by any other sense;
that is to say, the memory and imagination of magnitudes, motions,
sounds, colours, &c., as also of their order and parts. All which
things, though they be nothing but ideas and phantasms, happening
internally to him that imagineth, yet they will appear as if they
were external and not at all depending upon any power of the mind.
And these are the things to which he would give names and subtract
them from, and compound them with one another. For seeing that
after the destruction of all other things I suppose man still
remaining, and namely that he thinks, imagines, and remembers,
there can be nothing for him to think of but what is past. . . .
Now things may be considered, that is, be brought into account,
_either as internal accidents of our mind_, in which manner we
consider them when the question is about _some faculty of the
mind_: or, as _species of external things, not as really existing,
but appearing only to exist, or to have a being without us_. And
in this manner we are now to consider them."]
[Side-note: Perpetual implication of Subject with Object--Relate
and Correlate.]
In declaring that "Man is the measure of all things"--Protagoras
affirms that Subject is the measure of Object, or that every
object is relative to a correlative Subject. When a man affirms,
believes, or conceives, an object as existing, his own believing
or concipient mind is one side of the entire fact. It may be the
dark side, and what is called _the Object_ may be the light side,
of the entire fact: this is what happens in the case of tangible
and resisting substances, where Object, being the light side of
the fact, is apt to appear all in all:[19] a man thinks of the
Something which resists, without attending to the other aspect of
the fact of resistance, _viz._: his own energy or pressure, to
which resistance is made. On the other hand, when we speak of
enjoying any pleasure or suffering any pain, the enjoying or
suffering Subject appears all in all, distinguished plainly from
other Subjects, supposed to be not enjoying or suffering in the
same way: yet it is no more than the light side of the fact, of
which Object is the dark side. Each particular pain which we
suffer has its objective or differential peculiarity,
distinguishing it from other sensations, correlating with the same
sentient Subject.
[Footnote 19: "Nobiscum semper est ipsa quam quærimus (anima);
adest, tractat, loquitur--et, si fas est dicere, inter ista
nescitur." (Cassiodorus, De Animâ, c. 1, p. 594, in the edition of
his Opera Omnia, Venet. 1729).
"In the primitive dualism of consciousness, the Subject and Object
being inseparable, either of them apart from the other must be an
unknown quantity: the separation of either must be the
annihilation of both." (F. W. Farrar, Chapters on Language, c. 23,
p. 292: which chapter contains more on the same topic, well
deserving of perusal.)]
[Side-note: Such relativity is no less true in regard to the
ratiocinative combinations of each individual, than in regard to
his percipient capacities.]
The Protagorean dictum will thus be seen, when interpreted
correctly, to be quite distinct from that other doctrine with
which Plato identifies it: that Cognition is nothing else but
sensible Perception. If, rejecting this last doctrine, we hold
that cognition includes mental elements distinct from, though
co-operating with, sensible perception--the principle of relativity
laid down by Protagoras will not be the less true. My intellectual
activity--my powers of remembering, imagining, ratiocinating,
combining, &c., are a part of my mental nature, no less than my
powers of sensible perception: my cognitions and beliefs must all
be determined by, or relative to, this mental nature: to the turn
and development which all these various powers have taken in my
individual case. However multifarious the mental activities may
be, each man has his own peculiar allotment and manifestations
thereof, to which his cognitions must be relative. Let us grant
(with Plato) that the Nous or intelligent Mind apprehends
intelligible Entia or Ideas distinct from the world of sense: or
let us assume that Kant and Reid in the eighteenth century, and M.
Cousin with other French writers in the nineteenth, have destroyed
the Lockian philosophy, which took account (they say) of nothing
but the _à posteriori_ element of cognition--and have established
the existence of other elements of cognition _à priori_: intuitive
beliefs, first principles, primary or inexplicable Concepts of
Reason.[20] Still we must recollect that all such _à priori_
Concepts, Intuitions, Beliefs, &c., are summed up in the mind: and
that thus each man's mind, with its peculiar endowments, natural
or supernatural, is still the measure or limit of his cognitions,
acquired and acquirable. The Entia Rationis exist relatively to
Ratio, as the Entia Perceptionis exist relatively to Sense. This
is a point upon which Plato himself insists, in this very
dialogue. You do not, by producing this fact of innate mental
intuitions, eliminate the intuent mind; which must be done in
order to establish a negative to the Protagorean principle.[21]
Each intuitive belief whether correct or erroneous--whether held
unanimously by every one _semper et ubique_, or only held by a
proportion of mankind--is (or would be, if proved to exist) a fact
of our nature; capable of being looked at either on the side of
the believing Subject, which is its point of community with all
other parts of our nature--or on the side of the Object believed,
which is its point of difference or peculiarity. The fact with its
two opposite aspects is indivisible. Without Subject, Object
vanishes: without Object (some object or other, for this side of
the fact is essentially variable), Subject vanishes.
[Footnote 20: See M. Jouffroy, Préface à sa Traduction des
OEuvres de Reid, pp. xcvii.-ccxiv.