The dramatic power of the dialogues of Plato appears to diminish as
the metaphysical interest of them increases (compare Introd. to the
Philebus). There are no descriptions of time, place or persons, in the
Sophist and Statesman, but we are plunged at once into philosophical
discussions; the poetical charm has disappeared, and those who have no
taste for abstruse metaphysics will greatly prefer the earlier dialogues
to the later ones. Plato is conscious of the change, and in the
Statesman expressly accuses himself of a tediousness in the two
dialogues, which he ascribes to his desire of developing the dialectical
method. On the other hand, the kindred spirit of Hegel seemed to find in
the Sophist the crown and summit of the Platonic philosophy--here is the
place at which Plato most nearly approaches to the Hegelian identity of
Being and Not-being. Nor will the great importance of the two dialogues
be doubted by any one who forms a conception of the state of mind and
opinion which they are intended to meet. The sophisms of the day were
undermining philosophy; the denial of the existence of Not-being, and
of the connexion of ideas, was making truth and falsehood equally
impossible. It has been said that Plato would have written differently,
if he had been acquainted with the Organon of Aristotle. But could
the Organon of Aristotle ever have been written unless the Sophist
and Statesman had preceded? The swarm of fallacies which arose in the
infancy of mental science, and which was born and bred in the decay of
the pre-Socratic philosophies, was not dispelled by Aristotle, but
by Socrates and Plato. The summa genera of thought, the nature of
the proposition, of definition, of generalization, of synthesis and
analysis, of division and cross-division, are clearly described, and
the processes of induction and deduction are constantly employed in the
dialogues of Plato. The 'slippery' nature of comparison, the danger of
putting words in the place of things, the fallacy of arguing 'a dicto
secundum,' and in a circle, are frequently indicated by him. To all
these processes of truth and error, Aristotle, in the next generation,
gave distinctness; he brought them together in a separate science. But
he is not to be regarded as the original inventor of any of the great
logical forms, with the exception of the syllogism.
There is little worthy of remark in the characters of the Sophist. The
most noticeable point is the final retirement of Socrates from the field
of argument, and the substitution for him of an Eleatic stranger, who
is described as a pupil of Parmenides and Zeno, and is supposed to have
descended from a higher world in order to convict the Socratic circle of
error. As in the Timaeus, Plato seems to intimate by the withdrawal of
Socrates that he is passing beyond the limits of his teaching; and in
the Sophist and Statesman, as well as in the Parmenides, he probably
means to imply that he is making a closer approach to the schools of
Elea and Megara. He had much in common with them, but he must first
submit their ideas to criticism and revision. He had once thought as
he says, speaking by the mouth of the Eleatic, that he understood their
doctrine of Not-being; but now he does not even comprehend the nature
of Being. The friends of ideas (Soph.) are alluded to by him as distant
acquaintances, whom he criticizes ab extra; we do not recognize at
first sight that he is criticizing himself. The character of the Eleatic
stranger is colourless; he is to a certain extent the reflection of his
father and master, Parmenides, who is the protagonist in the dialogue
which is called by his name. Theaetetus himself is not distinguished
by the remarkable traits which are attributed to him in the preceding
dialogue. He is no longer under the spell of Socrates, or subject to the
operation of his midwifery, though the fiction of question and answer is
still maintained, and the necessity of taking Theaetetus along with him
is several times insisted upon by his partner in the discussion. There
is a reminiscence of the old Theaetetus in his remark that he will not
tire of the argument, and in his conviction, which the Eleatic thinks
likely to be permanent, that the course of events is governed by the
will of God. Throughout the two dialogues Socrates continues a silent
auditor, in the Statesman just reminding us of his presence, at the
commencement, by a characteristic jest about the statesman and the
philosopher, and by an allusion to his namesake, with whom on that
ground he claims relationship, as he had already claimed an affinity
with Theaetetus, grounded on the likeness of his ugly face. But in
neither dialogue, any more than in the Timaeus, does he offer any
criticism on the views which are propounded by another.
The style, though wanting in dramatic power,--in this respect resembling
the Philebus and the Laws,--is very clear and accurate, and has
several touches of humour and satire. The language is less fanciful and
imaginative than that of the earlier dialogues; and there is more of
bitterness, as in the Laws, though traces of a similar temper may also
be observed in the description of the 'great brute' in the Republic,
and in the contrast of the lawyer and philosopher in the Theaetetus.
The following are characteristic passages: 'The ancient philosophers,
of whom we may say, without offence, that they went on their way rather
regardless of whether we understood them or not;' the picture of the
materialists, or earth-born giants, 'who grasped oaks and rocks in their
hands,' and who must be improved before they can be reasoned with; and
the equally humourous delineation of the friends of ideas, who defend
themselves from a fastness in the invisible world; or the comparison of
the Sophist to a painter or maker (compare Republic), and the hunt after
him in the rich meadow-lands of youth and wealth; or, again, the
light and graceful touch with which the older philosophies are painted
('Ionian and Sicilian muses'), the comparison of them to mythological
tales, and the fear of the Eleatic that he will be counted a parricide
if he ventures to lay hands on his father Parmenides; or, once more,
the likening of the Eleatic stranger to a god from heaven.--All these
passages, notwithstanding the decline of the style, retain the impress
of the great master of language. But the equably diffused grace is gone;
instead of the endless variety of the early dialogues, traces of the
rhythmical monotonous cadence of the Laws begin to appear; and already
an approach is made to the technical language of Aristotle, in the
frequent use of the words 'essence,' 'power,' 'generation,' 'motion,'
'rest,' 'action,' 'passion,' and the like.
The Sophist, like the Phaedrus, has a double character, and unites two
enquirers, which are only in a somewhat forced manner connected with
each other. The first is the search after the Sophist, the second is the
enquiry into the nature of Not-being, which occupies the middle part of
the work. For 'Not-being' is the hole or division of the dialectical
net in which the Sophist has hidden himself. He is the imaginary
impersonation of false opinion. Yet he denies the possibility of false
opinion; for falsehood is that which is not, and therefore has no
existence. At length the difficulty is solved; the answer, in
the language of the Republic, appears 'tumbling out at our feet.'
Acknowledging that there is a communion of kinds with kinds, and not
merely one Being or Good having different names, or several isolated
ideas or classes incapable of communion, we discover 'Not-being' to be
the other of 'Being.' Transferring this to language and thought, we have
no difficulty in apprehending that a proposition may be false as well
as true. The Sophist, drawn out of the shelter which Cynic and Megarian
paradoxes have temporarily afforded him, is proved to be a dissembler
and juggler with words.
The chief points of interest in the dialogue are: (I) the character
attributed to the Sophist: (II) the dialectical method: (III) the nature
of the puzzle about 'Not-being:' (IV) the battle of the philosophers:
(V) the relation of the Sophist to other dialogues.
I. The Sophist in Plato is the master of the art of illusion; the
charlatan, the foreigner, the prince of esprits-faux, the hireling who
is not a teacher, and who, from whatever point of view he is regarded,
is the opposite of the true teacher. He is the 'evil one,' the ideal
representative of all that Plato most disliked in the moral and
intellectual tendencies of his own age; the adversary of the almost
equally ideal Socrates. He seems to be always growing in the fancy
of Plato, now boastful, now eristic, now clothing himself in rags of
philosophy, now more akin to the rhetorician or lawyer, now haranguing,
now questioning, until the final appearance in the Politicus of his
departing shadow in the disguise of a statesman. We are not to suppose
that Plato intended by such a description to depict Protagoras or
Gorgias, or even Thrasymachus, who all turn out to be 'very good sort
of people when we know them,' and all of them part on good terms with
Socrates. But he is speaking of a being as imaginary as the wise man
of the Stoics, and whose character varies in different dialogues. Like
mythology, Greek philosophy has a tendency to personify ideas. And the
Sophist is not merely a teacher of rhetoric for a fee of one or fifty
drachmae (Crat.), but an ideal of Plato's in which the falsehood of all
mankind is reflected.
A milder tone is adopted towards the Sophists in a well-known passage of
the Republic, where they are described as the followers rather than
the leaders of the rest of mankind. Plato ridicules the notion that
any individuals can corrupt youth to a degree worth speaking of in
comparison with the greater influence of public opinion. But there is
no real inconsistency between this and other descriptions of the Sophist
which occur in the Platonic writings. For Plato is not justifying the
Sophists in the passage just quoted, but only representing their power
to be contemptible; they are to be despised rather than feared, and are
no worse than the rest of mankind. But a teacher or statesman may be
justly condemned, who is on a level with mankind when he ought to be
above them. There is another point of view in which this passage should
also be considered. The great enemy of Plato is the world, not exactly
in the theological sense, yet in one not wholly different--the world as
the hater of truth and lover of appearance, occupied in the pursuit of
gain and pleasure rather than of knowledge, banded together against the
few good and wise men, and devoid of true education. This creature has
many heads: rhetoricians, lawyers, statesmen, poets, sophists. But the
Sophist is the Proteus who takes the likeness of all of them; all other
deceivers have a piece of him in them. And sometimes he is represented
as the corrupter of the world; and sometimes the world as the corrupter
of him and of itself.
Of late years the Sophists have found an enthusiastic defender in the
distinguished historian of Greece. He appears to maintain (1) that the
term 'Sophist' is not the name of a particular class, and would have
been applied indifferently to Socrates and Plato, as well as to Gorgias
and Protagoras; (2) that the bad sense was imprinted on the word by the
genius of Plato; (3) that the principal Sophists were not the corrupters
of youth (for the Athenian youth were no more corrupted in the age of
Demosthenes than in the age of Pericles), but honourable and estimable
persons, who supplied a training in literature which was generally
wanted at the time. We will briefly consider how far these statements
appear to be justified by facts: and, 1, about the meaning of the word
there arises an interesting question:--
Many words are used both in a general and a specific sense, and the
two senses are not always clearly distinguished. Sometimes the generic
meaning has been narrowed to the specific, while in other cases the
specific meaning has been enlarged or altered. Examples of the former
class are furnished by some ecclesiastical terms: apostles, prophets,
bishops, elders, catholics. Examples of the latter class may also be
found in a similar field: jesuits, puritans, methodists, and the like.
Sometimes the meaning is both narrowed and enlarged; and a good or bad
sense will subsist side by side with a neutral one. A curious effect
is produced on the meaning of a word when the very term which is
stigmatized by the world (e.g. Methodists) is adopted by the obnoxious
or derided class; this tends to define the meaning. Or, again, the
opposite result is produced, when the world refuses to allow some sect
or body of men the possession of an honourable name which they have
assumed, or applies it to them only in mockery or irony.
The term 'Sophist' is one of those words of which the meaning has been
both contracted and enlarged. Passages may be quoted from Herodotus
and the tragedians, in which the word is used in a neutral sense for a
contriver or deviser or inventor, without including any ethical idea of
goodness or badness. Poets as well as philosophers were called Sophists
in the fifth century before Christ. In Plato himself the term is applied
in the sense of a 'master in art,' without any bad meaning attaching to
it (Symp.; Meno). In the later Greek, again, 'sophist' and 'philosopher'
became almost indistinguishable. There was no reproach conveyed by the
word; the additional association, if any, was only that of rhetorician
or teacher. Philosophy had become eclecticism and imitation: in the
decline of Greek thought there was no original voice lifted up 'which
reached to a thousand years because of the god.' Hence the two words,
like the characters represented by them, tended to pass into one
another. Yet even here some differences appeared; for the term 'Sophist'
would hardly have been applied to the greater names, such as Plotinus,
and would have been more often used of a professor of philosophy in
general than of a maintainer of particular tenets.
But the real question is, not whether the word 'Sophist' has all these
senses, but whether there is not also a specific bad sense in which
the term is applied to certain contemporaries of Socrates. Would an
Athenian, as Mr. Grote supposes, in the fifth century before Christ,
have included Socrates and Plato, as well as Gorgias and Protagoras,
under the specific class of Sophists? To this question we must answer,
No: if ever the term is applied to Socrates and Plato, either the
application is made by an enemy out of mere spite, or the sense in which
it is used is neutral. Plato, Xenophon, Isocrates, Aristotle, all give
a bad import to the word; and the Sophists are regarded as a separate
class in all of them. And in later Greek literature, the distinction
is quite marked between the succession of philosophers from Thales to
Aristotle, and the Sophists of the age of Socrates, who appeared like
meteors for a short time in different parts of Greece. For the purposes
of comedy, Socrates may have been identified with the Sophists, and
he seems to complain of this in the Apology. But there is no reason to
suppose that Socrates, differing by so many outward marks, would really
have been confounded in the mind of Anytus, or Callicles, or of any
intelligent Athenian, with the splendid foreigners who from time to time
visited Athens, or appeared at the Olympic games. The man of genius, the
great original thinker, the disinterested seeker after truth, the master
of repartee whom no one ever defeated in an argument, was separated,
even in the mind of the vulgar Athenian, by an 'interval which no
geometry can express,' from the balancer of sentences, the interpreter
and reciter of the poets, the divider of the meanings of words, the
teacher of rhetoric, the professor of morals and manners.
2. The use of the term 'Sophist' in the dialogues of Plato also shows
that the bad sense was not affixed by his genius, but already current.
When Protagoras says, 'I confess that I am a Sophist,' he implies that
the art which he professes has already a bad name; and the words of the
young Hippocrates, when with a blush upon his face which is just seen
by the light of dawn he admits that he is going to be made 'a Sophist,'
would lose their point, unless the term had been discredited. There is
nothing surprising in the Sophists having an evil name; that, whether
deserved or not, was a natural consequence of their vocation. That they
were foreigners, that they made fortunes, that they taught novelties,
that they excited the minds of youth, are quite sufficient reasons to
account for the opprobrium which attached to them. The genius of Plato
could not have stamped the word anew, or have imparted the associations
which occur in contemporary writers, such as Xenophon and Isocrates.
Changes in the meaning of words can only be made with great difficulty,
and not unless they are supported by a strong current of popular
feeling. There is nothing improbable in supposing that Plato may
have extended and envenomed the meaning, or that he may have done the
Sophists the same kind of disservice with posterity which Pascal did to
the Jesuits. But the bad sense of the word was not and could not have
been invented by him, and is found in his earlier dialogues, e.g. the
Protagoras, as well as in the later.
3. There is no ground for disbelieving that the principal Sophists,
Gorgias, Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias, were good and honourable men.
The notion that they were corrupters of the Athenian youth has no real
foundation, and partly arises out of the use of the term 'Sophist' in
modern times. The truth is, that we know little about them; and the
witness of Plato in their favour is probably not much more historical
than his witness against them. Of that national decline of genius,
unity, political force, which has been sometimes described as the
corruption of youth, the Sophists were one among many signs;--in these
respects Athens may have degenerated; but, as Mr. Grote remarks, there
is no reason to suspect any greater moral corruption in the age of
Demosthenes than in the age of Pericles. The Athenian youth were not
corrupted in this sense, and therefore the Sophists could not have
corrupted them. It is remarkable, and may be fairly set down to their
credit, that Plato nowhere attributes to them that peculiar Greek
sympathy with youth, which he ascribes to Parmenides, and which was
evidently common in the Socratic circle. Plato delights to exhibit
them in a ludicrous point of view, and to show them always rather at
a disadvantage in the company of Socrates. But he has no quarrel with
their characters, and does not deny that they are respectable men.
The Sophist, in the dialogue which is called after him, is exhibited in
many different lights, and appears and reappears in a variety of forms.
There is some want of the higher Platonic art in the Eleatic Stranger
eliciting his true character by a labourious process of enquiry, when he
had already admitted that he knew quite well the difference between
the Sophist and the Philosopher, and had often heard the question
discussed;--such an anticipation would hardly have occurred in the
earlier dialogues. But Plato could not altogether give up his Socratic
method, of which another trace may be thought to be discerned in his
adoption of a common instance before he proceeds to the greater matter
in hand. Yet the example is also chosen in order to damage the 'hooker
of men' as much as possible; each step in the pedigree of the angler
suggests some injurious reflection about the Sophist. They are both
hunters after a living prey, nearly related to tyrants and thieves, and
the Sophist is the cousin of the parasite and flatterer. The effect of
this is heightened by the accidental manner in which the discovery is
made, as the result of a scientific division. His descent in another
branch affords the opportunity of more 'unsavoury comparisons.' For he
is a retail trader, and his wares are either imported or home-made, like
those of other retail traders; his art is thus deprived of the character
of a liberal profession. But the most distinguishing characteristic of
him is, that he is a disputant, and higgles over an argument. A feature
of the Eristic here seems to blend with Plato's usual description of
the Sophists, who in the early dialogues, and in the Republic, are
frequently depicted as endeavouring to save themselves from disputing
with Socrates by making long orations. In this character he parts
company from the vain and impertinent talker in private life, who is a
loser of money, while he is a maker of it.
But there is another general division under which his art may be also
supposed to fall, and that is purification; and from purification
is descended education, and the new principle of education is to
interrogate men after the manner of Socrates, and make them teach
themselves. Here again we catch a glimpse rather of a Socratic or
Eristic than of a Sophist in the ordinary sense of the term. And Plato
does not on this ground reject the claim of the Sophist to be the true
philosopher. One more feature of the Eristic rather than of the Sophist
is the tendency of the troublesome animal to run away into the darkness
of Not-being. Upon the whole, we detect in him a sort of hybrid or
double nature, of which, except perhaps in the Euthydemus of Plato,
we find no other trace in Greek philosophy; he combines the teacher of
virtue with the Eristic; while in his omniscience, in his ignorance
of himself, in his arts of deception, and in his lawyer-like habit of
writing and speaking about all things, he is still the antithesis of
Socrates and of the true teacher.
II. The question has been asked, whether the method of 'abscissio
infinti,' by which the Sophist is taken, is a real and valuable logical
process. Modern science feels that this, like other processes of formal
logic, presents a very inadequate conception of the actual complex
procedure of the mind by which scientific truth is detected and
verified. Plato himself seems to be aware that mere division is an
unsafe and uncertain weapon, first, in the Statesman, when he says that
we should divide in the middle, for in that way we are more likely to
attain species; secondly, in the parallel precept of the Philebus,
that we should not pass from the most general notions to infinity, but
include all the intervening middle principles, until, as he also says
in the Statesman, we arrive at the infima species; thirdly, in the
Phaedrus, when he says that the dialectician will carve the limbs of
truth without mangling them; and once more in the Statesman, if we
cannot bisect species, we must carve them as well as we can. No better
image of nature or truth, as an organic whole, can be conceived than
this. So far is Plato from supposing that mere division and subdivision
of general notions will guide men into all truth.
Plato does not really mean to say that the Sophist or the Statesman
can be caught in this way. But these divisions and subdivisions were
favourite logical exercises of the age in which he lived; and while
indulging his dialectical fancy, and making a contribution to logical
method, he delights also to transfix the Eristic Sophist with weapons
borrowed from his own armoury. As we have already seen, the division
gives him the opportunity of making the most damaging reflections on
the Sophist and all his kith and kin, and to exhibit him in the most
discreditable light.
Nor need we seriously consider whether Plato was right in assuming that
an animal so various could not be confined within the limits of a
single definition. In the infancy of logic, men sought only to obtain
a definition of an unknown or uncertain term; the after reflection
scarcely occurred to them that the word might have several senses, which
shaded off into one another, and were not capable of being comprehended
in a single notion. There is no trace of this reflection in Plato.
But neither is there any reason to think, even if the reflection had
occurred to him, that he would have been deterred from carrying on the
war with weapons fair or unfair against the outlaw Sophist.
III. The puzzle about 'Not-being' appears to us to be one of the most
unreal difficulties of ancient philosophy. We cannot understand the
attitude of mind which could imagine that falsehood had no existence, if
reality was denied to Not-being: How could such a question arise at
all, much less become of serious importance? The answer to this, and to
nearly all other difficulties of early Greek philosophy, is to be sought
for in the history of ideas, and the answer is only unsatisfactory
because our knowledge is defective. In the passage from the world
of sense and imagination and common language to that of opinion and
reflection the human mind was exposed to many dangers, and often
'Found no end in wandering mazes lost.'
On the other hand, the discovery of abstractions was the great source
of all mental improvement in after ages. It was the pushing aside of
the old, the revelation of the new. But each one of the company of
abstractions, if we may speak in the metaphorical language of Plato,
became in turn the tyrant of the mind, the dominant idea, which would
allow no other to have a share in the throne. This is especially true of
the Eleatic philosophy: while the absoluteness of Being was asserted
in every form of language, the sensible world and all the phenomena of
experience were comprehended under Not-being. Nor was any difficulty or
perplexity thus created, so long as the mind, lost in the contemplation
of Being, asked no more questions, and never thought of applying the
categories of Being or Not-being to mind or opinion or practical life.
But the negative as well as the positive idea had sunk deep into the
intellect of man. The effect of the paradoxes of Zeno extended far
beyond the Eleatic circle. And now an unforeseen consequence began to
arise. If the Many were not, if all things were names of the One, and
nothing could be predicated of any other thing, how could truth be
distinguished from falsehood? The Eleatic philosopher would have
replied that Being is alone true. But mankind had got beyond his barren
abstractions: they were beginning to analyze, to classify, to define,
to ask what is the nature of knowledge, opinion, sensation. Still less
could they be content with the description which Achilles gives in Homer
of the man whom his soul hates--
os chi eteron men keuthe eni phresin, allo de eipe.
For their difficulty was not a practical but a metaphysical one; and
their conception of falsehood was really impaired and weakened by a
metaphysical illusion.
The strength of the illusion seems to lie in the alternative: If we once
admit the existence of Being and Not-being, as two spheres which exclude
each other, no Being or reality can be ascribed to Not-being, and
therefore not to falsehood, which is the image or expression of
Not-being. Falsehood is wholly false; and to speak of true falsehood, as
Theaetetus does (Theaet.), is a contradiction in terms. The fallacy
to us is ridiculous and transparent,--no better than those which
Plato satirizes in the Euthydemus. It is a confusion of falsehood and
negation, from which Plato himself is not entirely free. Instead of
saying, 'This is not in accordance with facts,' 'This is proved by
experience to be false,' and from such examples forming a general notion
of falsehood, the mind of the Greek thinker was lost in the mazes of the
Eleatic philosophy. And the greater importance which Plato attributes
to this fallacy, compared with others, is due to the influence which
the Eleatic philosophy exerted over him. He sees clearly to a certain
extent; but he has not yet attained a complete mastery over the ideas of
his predecessors--they are still ends to him, and not mere instruments
of thought. They are too rough-hewn to be harmonized in a single
structure, and may be compared to rocks which project or overhang in
some ancient city's walls. There are many such imperfect syncretisms or
eclecticisms in the history of philosophy. A modern philosopher, though
emancipated from scholastic notions of essence or substance, might
still be seriously affected by the abstract idea of necessity; or though
accustomed, like Bacon, to criticize abstract notions, might not extend
his criticism to the syllogism.
The saying or thinking the thing that is not, would be the popular
definition of falsehood or error. If we were met by the Sophist's
objection, the reply would probably be an appeal to experience. Ten
thousands, as Homer would say (mala murioi), tell falsehoods and
fall into errors. And this is Plato's reply, both in the Cratylus
and Sophist. 'Theaetetus is flying,' is a sentence in form quite as
grammatical as 'Theaetetus is sitting'; the difference between the two
sentences is, that the one is true and the other false. But,
before making this appeal to common sense, Plato propounds for our
consideration a theory of the nature of the negative.
The theory is, that Not-being is relation. Not-being is the other of
Being, and has as many kinds as there are differences in Being.
This doctrine is the simple converse of the famous proposition of
Spinoza,--not 'Omnis determinatio est negatio,' but 'Omnis negatio est
determinatio';--not, All distinction is negation, but, All negation is
distinction. Not-being is the unfolding or determining of Being, and is
a necessary element in all other things that are. We should be careful
to observe, first, that Plato does not identify Being with Not-being; he
has no idea of progression by antagonism, or of the Hegelian vibration
of moments: he would not have said with Heracleitus, 'All things are
and are not, and become and become not.' Secondly, he has lost sight
altogether of the other sense of Not-being, as the negative of Being;
although he again and again recognizes the validity of the law of
contradiction. Thirdly, he seems to confuse falsehood with negation. Nor
is he quite consistent in regarding Not-being as one class of Being, and
yet as coextensive with Being in general. Before analyzing further the
topics thus suggested, we will endeavour to trace the manner in which
Plato arrived at his conception of Not-being.
In all the later dialogues of Plato, the idea of mind or intelligence
becomes more and more prominent. That idea which Anaxagoras employed
inconsistently in the construction of the world, Plato, in the Philebus,
the Sophist, and the Laws, extends to all things, attributing to
Providence a care, infinitesimal as well as infinite, of all creation.
The divine mind is the leading religious thought of the later works of
Plato. The human mind is a sort of reflection of this, having ideas
of Being, Sameness, and the like. At times they seem to be parted by a
great gulf (Parmenides); at other times they have a common nature, and
the light of a common intelligence.
But this ever-growing idea of mind is really irreconcilable with the
abstract Pantheism of the Eleatics. To the passionate language of
Parmenides, Plato replies in a strain equally passionate:--What! has
not Being mind? and is not Being capable of being known? and, if this
is admitted, then capable of being affected or acted upon?--in motion,
then, and yet not wholly incapable of rest. Already we have been
compelled to attribute opposite determinations to Being. And the
answer to the difficulty about Being may be equally the answer to the
difficulty about Not-being.
The answer is, that in these and all other determinations of any notion
we are attributing to it 'Not-being.' We went in search of Not-being and
seemed to lose Being, and now in the hunt after Being we recover both.
Not-being is a kind of Being, and in a sense co-extensive with Being.
And there are as many divisions of Not-being as of Being. To
every positive idea--'just,' 'beautiful,' and the like, there is a
corresponding negative idea--'not-just,' 'not-beautiful,' and the like.
A doubt may be raised whether this account of the negative is really
the true one. The common logicians would say that the 'not-just,'
'not-beautiful,' are not really classes at all, but are merged in one
great class of the infinite or negative. The conception of Plato, in
the days before logic, seems to be more correct than this. For the word
'not' does not altogether annihilate the positive meaning of the word
'just': at least, it does not prevent our looking for the 'not-just'
in or about the same class in which we might expect to find the 'just.'
'Not-just is not-honourable' is neither a false nor an unmeaning
proposition. The reason is that the negative proposition has really
passed into an undefined positive. To say that 'not-just' has no more
meaning than 'not-honourable'--that is to say, that the two cannot in
any degree be distinguished, is clearly repugnant to the common use of
language.
The ordinary logic is also jealous of the explanation of negation as
relation, because seeming to take away the principle of contradiction.
Plato, as far as we know, is the first philosopher who distinctly
enunciated this principle; and though we need not suppose him to have
been always consistent with himself, there is no real inconsistency
between his explanation of the negative and the principle of
contradiction. Neither the Platonic notion of the negative as the
principle of difference, nor the Hegelian identity of Being and
Not-being, at all touch the principle of contradiction. For what is
asserted about Being and Not-Being only relates to our most abstract
notions, and in no way interferes with the principle of contradiction
employed in the concrete. Because Not-being is identified with Other, or
Being with Not-being, this does not make the proposition 'Some have not
eaten' any the less a contradiction of 'All have eaten.'
The explanation of the negative given by Plato in the Sophist is a true
but partial one; for the word 'not,' besides the meaning of 'other,'
may also imply 'opposition.' And difference or opposition may be either
total or partial: the not-beautiful may be other than the beautiful, or
in no relation to the beautiful, or a specific class in various degrees
opposed to the beautiful. And the negative may be a negation of fact
or of thought (ou and me). Lastly, there are certain ideas, such as
'beginning,' 'becoming,' 'the finite,' 'the abstract,' in which
the negative cannot be separated from the positive, and 'Being' and
'Not-being' are inextricably blended.
Plato restricts the conception of Not-being to difference. Man is a
rational animal, and is not--as many other things as are not included
under this definition. He is and is not, and is because he is not.
Besides the positive class to which he belongs, there are endless
negative classes to which he may be referred. This is certainly
intelligible, but useless. To refer a subject to a negative class is
unmeaning, unless the 'not' is a mere modification of the positive, as
in the example of 'not honourable' and 'dishonourable'; or unless the
class is characterized by the absence rather than the presence of a
particular quality.
Nor is it easy to see how Not-being any more than Sameness or Otherness
is one of the classes of Being. They are aspects rather than classes of
Being. Not-being can only be included in Being, as the denial of some
particular class of Being. If we attempt to pursue such airy phantoms
at all, the Hegelian identity of Being and Not-being is a more apt and
intelligible expression of the same mental phenomenon. For Plato has
not distinguished between the Being which is prior to Not-being, and the
Being which is the negation of Not-being (compare Parm.).
But he is not thinking of this when he says that Being comprehends
Not-being. Again, we should probably go back for the true explanation
to the influence which the Eleatic philosophy exercised over him. Under
'Not-being' the Eleatic had included all the realities of the sensible
world. Led by this association and by the common use of language, which
has been already noticed, we cannot be much surprised that Plato should
have made classes of Not-being. It is observable that he does not
absolutely deny that there is an opposite of Being. He is inclined to
leave the question, merely remarking that the opposition, if admissible
at all, is not expressed by the term 'Not-being.'
On the whole, we must allow that the great service rendered by Plato
to metaphysics in the Sophist, is not his explanation of 'Not-being' as
difference. With this he certainly laid the ghost of 'Not-being'; and we
may attribute to him in a measure the credit of anticipating Spinoza
and Hegel. But his conception is not clear or consistent; he does not
recognize the different senses of the negative, and he confuses
the different classes of Not-being with the abstract notion. As the
Pre-Socratic philosopher failed to distinguish between the universal and
the true, while he placed the particulars of sense under the false and
apparent, so Plato appears to identify negation with falsehood, or is
unable to distinguish them. The greatest service rendered by him to
mental science is the recognition of the communion of classes, which,
although based by him on his account of 'Not-being,' is independent
of it. He clearly saw that the isolation of ideas or classes is the
annihilation of reasoning. Thus, after wandering in many diverging
paths, we return to common sense. And for this reason we may be inclined
to do less than justice to Plato,--because the truth which he attains
by a real effort of thought is to us a familiar and unconscious truism,
which no one would any longer think either of doubting or examining.
IV. The later dialogues of Plato contain many references to contemporary
philosophy. Both in the Theaetetus and in the Sophist he recognizes
that he is in the midst of a fray; a huge irregular battle everywhere
surrounds him (Theaet.). First, there are the two great philosophies
going back into cosmogony and poetry: the philosophy of Heracleitus,
supposed to have a poetical origin in Homer, and that of the Eleatics,
which in a similar spirit he conceives to be even older than Xenophanes
(compare Protag.). Still older were theories of two and three
principles, hot and cold, moist and dry, which were ever marrying and
being given in marriage: in speaking of these, he is probably referring
to Pherecydes and the early Ionians. In the philosophy of motion there
were different accounts of the relation of plurality and unity,
which were supposed to be joined and severed by love and hate,
some maintaining that this process was perpetually going on (e.g.
Heracleitus); others (e.g. Empedocles) that there was an alternation of
them. Of the Pythagoreans or of Anaxagoras he makes no distinct mention.
His chief opponents are, first, Eristics or Megarians; secondly, the
Materialists.
The picture which he gives of both these latter schools is indistinct;
and he appears reluctant to mention the names of their teachers. Nor can
we easily determine how much is to be assigned to the Cynics, how much
to the Megarians, or whether the 'repellent Materialists' (Theaet.)
are Cynics or Atomists, or represent some unknown phase of opinion at
Athens. To the Cynics and Antisthenes is commonly attributed, on the
authority of Aristotle, the denial of predication, while the Megarians
are said to have been Nominalists, asserting the One Good under many
names to be the true Being of Zeno and the Eleatics, and, like Zeno,
employing their negative dialectic in the refutation of opponents. But
the later Megarians also denied predication; and this tenet, which is
attributed to all of them by Simplicius, is certainly in accordance with
their over-refining philosophy. The 'tyros young and old,' of whom
Plato speaks, probably include both. At any rate, we shall be safer in
accepting the general description of them which he has given, and in not
attempting to draw a precise line between them.
Of these Eristics, whether Cynics or Megarians, several characteristics
are found in Plato:--
1. They pursue verbal oppositions; 2. they make reasoning impossible by
their over-accuracy in the use of language; 3. they deny predication;
4. they go from unity to plurality, without passing through the
intermediate stages; 5. they refuse to attribute motion or power to
Being; 6. they are the enemies of sense;--whether they are the 'friends
of ideas,' who carry on the polemic against sense, is uncertain;
probably under this remarkable expression Plato designates those who
more nearly approached himself, and may be criticizing an earlier form
of his own doctrines. We may observe (1) that he professes only to give
us a few opinions out of many which were at that time current in
Greece; (2) that he nowhere alludes to the ethical teaching of the
Cynics--unless the argument in the Protagoras, that the virtues are one
and not many, may be supposed to contain a reference to their views, as
well as to those of Socrates; and unless they are the school alluded to
in the Philebus, which is described as 'being very skilful in physics,
and as maintaining pleasure to be the absence of pain.' That Antisthenes
wrote a book called 'Physicus,' is hardly a sufficient reason for
describing them as skilful in physics, which appear to have been very
alien to the tendency of the Cynics.
The Idealism of the fourth century before Christ in Greece, as in
other ages and countries, seems to have provoked a reaction towards
Materialism. The maintainers of this doctrine are described in the
Theaetetus as obstinate persons who will believe in nothing which they
cannot hold in their hands, and in the Sophist as incapable of argument.
They are probably the same who are said in the Tenth Book of the Laws
to attribute the course of events to nature, art, and chance. Who they
were, we have no means of determining except from Plato's description of
them. His silence respecting the Atomists might lead us to suppose that
here we have a trace of them. But the Atomists were not Materialists in
the grosser sense of the term, nor were they incapable of reasoning; and
Plato would hardly have described a great genius like Democritus in the
disdainful terms which he uses of the Materialists. Upon the whole, we
must infer that the persons here spoken of are unknown to us, like the
many other writers and talkers at Athens and elsewhere, of whose endless
activity of mind Aristotle in his Metaphysics has preserved an anonymous
memorial.
V. The Sophist is the sequel of the Theaetetus, and is connected with
the Parmenides by a direct allusion (compare Introductions to Theaetetus
and Parmenides). In the Theaetetus we sought to discover the nature
of knowledge and false opinion. But the nature of false opinion seemed
impenetrable; for we were unable to understand how there could be any
reality in Not-being. In the Sophist the question is taken up again; the
nature of Not-being is detected, and there is no longer any metaphysical
impediment in the way of admitting the possibility of falsehood. To
the Parmenides, the Sophist stands in a less defined and more remote
relation. There human thought is in process of disorganization; no
absurdity or inconsistency is too great to be elicited from the
analysis of the simple ideas of Unity or Being. In the Sophist the same
contradictions are pursued to a certain extent, but only with a view
to their resolution. The aim of the dialogue is to show how the few
elemental conceptions of the human mind admit of a natural connexion in
thought and speech, which Megarian or other sophistry vainly attempts to
deny.
...
True to the appointment of the previous day, Theodorus and Theaetetus
meet Socrates at the same spot, bringing with them an Eleatic Stranger,
whom Theodorus introduces as a true philosopher. Socrates, half in jest,
half in earnest, declares that he must be a god in disguise, who, as
Homer would say, has come to earth that he may visit the good and evil
among men, and detect the foolishness of Athenian wisdom. At any rate he
is a divine person, one of a class who are hardly recognized on earth;
who appear in divers forms--now as statesmen, now as sophists, and are
often deemed madmen. 'Philosopher, statesman, sophist,' says Socrates,
repeating the words--'I should like to ask our Eleatic friend what his
countrymen think of them; do they regard them as one, or three?'
The Stranger has been already asked the same question by Theodorus and
Theaetetus; and he at once replies that they are thought to be three;
but to explain the difference fully would take time. He is pressed
to give this fuller explanation, either in the form of a speech or
of question and answer. He prefers the latter, and chooses as his
respondent Theaetetus, whom he already knows, and who is recommended to
him by Socrates.
We are agreed, he says, about the name Sophist, but we may not be
equally agreed about his nature. Great subjects should be approached
through familiar examples, and, considering that he is a creature not
easily caught, I think that, before approaching him, we should try
our hand upon some more obvious animal, who may be made the subject of
logical experiment; shall we say an angler? 'Very good.'
In the first place, the angler is an artist; and there are two kinds
of art,--productive art, which includes husbandry, manufactures,
imitations; and acquisitive art, which includes learning, trading,
fighting, hunting. The angler's is an acquisitive art, and acquisition
may be effected either by exchange or by conquest; in the latter case,
either by force or craft. Conquest by craft is called hunting, and of
hunting there is one kind which pursues inanimate, and another which
pursues animate objects; and animate objects may be either land animals
or water animals, and water animals either fly over the water or live
in the water. The hunting of the last is called fishing; and of fishing,
one kind uses enclosures, catching the fish in nets and baskets, and
another kind strikes them either with spears by night or with barbed
spears or barbed hooks by day; the barbed spears are impelled from
above, the barbed hooks are jerked into the head and lips of the fish,
which are then drawn from below upwards. Thus, by a series of divisions,
we have arrived at the definition of the angler's art.
And now by the help of this example we may proceed to bring to light
the nature of the Sophist. Like the angler, he is an artist, and the
resemblance does not end here. For they are both hunters, and hunters
of animals; the one of water, and the other of land animals. But at this
point they diverge, the one going to the sea and the rivers, and the
other to the rivers of wealth and rich meadow-lands, in which generous
youth abide. On land you may hunt tame animals, or you may hunt wild
animals. And man is a tame animal, and he may be hunted either by force
or persuasion;--either by the pirate, man-stealer, soldier, or by the
lawyer, orator, talker. The latter use persuasion, and persuasion is
either private or public. Of the private practitioners of the art, some
bring gifts to those whom they hunt: these are lovers. And others take
hire; and some of these flatter, and in return are fed; others profess
to teach virtue and receive a round sum. And who are these last? Tell me
who? Have we not unearthed the Sophist?
But he is a many-sided creature, and may still be traced in another line
of descent. The acquisitive art had a branch of exchange as well as of
hunting, and exchange is either giving or selling; and the seller is
either a manufacturer or a merchant; and the merchant either retails or
exports; and the exporter may export either food for the body or food
for the mind. And of this trading in food for the mind, one kind may be
termed the art of display, and another the art of selling learning; and
learning may be a learning of the arts or of virtue. The seller of the
arts may be called an art-seller; the seller of virtue, a Sophist.
Again, there is a third line, in which a Sophist may be traced. For
is he less a Sophist when, instead of exporting his wares to another
country, he stays at home, and retails goods, which he not only buys of
others, but manufactures himself?
Or he may be descended from the acquisitive art in the combative line,
through the pugnacious, the controversial, the disputatious arts; and he
will be found at last in the eristic section of the latter, and in that
division of it which disputes in private for gain about the general
principles of right and wrong.
And still there is a track of him which has not yet been followed out by
us. Do not our household servants talk of sifting, straining, winnowing?
And they also speak of carding, spinning, and the like. All these are
processes of division; and of division there are two kinds,--one in
which like is divided from like, and another in which the good is
separated from the bad. The latter of the two is termed purification;
and again, of purification, there are two sorts,--of animate bodies
(which may be internal or external), and of inanimate. Medicine and
gymnastic are the internal purifications of the animate, and bathing the
external; and of the inanimate, fulling and cleaning and other humble
processes, some of which have ludicrous names. Not that dialectic is a
respecter of names or persons, or a despiser of humble occupations; nor
does she think much of the greater or less benefits conferred by them.
For her aim is knowledge; she wants to know how the arts are related to
one another, and would quite as soon learn the nature of hunting from
the vermin-destroyer as from the general. And she only desires to have
a general name, which shall distinguish purifications of the soul from
purifications of the body.
Now purification is the taking away of evil; and there are two kinds
of evil in the soul,--the one answering to disease in the body, and the
other to deformity. Disease is the discord or war of opposite principles
in the soul; and deformity is the want of symmetry, or failure in the
attainment of a mark or measure. The latter arises from ignorance, and
no one is voluntarily ignorant; ignorance is only the aberration of the
soul moving towards knowledge. And as medicine cures the diseases and
gymnastic the deformity of the body, so correction cures the injustice,
and education (which differs among the Hellenes from mere instruction in
the arts) cures the ignorance of the soul. Again, ignorance is twofold,
simple ignorance, and ignorance having the conceit of knowledge. And
education is also twofold: there is the old-fashioned moral training of
our forefathers, which was very troublesome and not very successful; and
another, of a more subtle nature, which proceeds upon a notion that
all ignorance is involuntary. The latter convicts a man out of his own
mouth, by pointing out to him his inconsistencies and contradictions;
and the consequence is that he quarrels with himself, instead of
quarrelling with his neighbours, and is cured of prejudices and
obstructions by a mode of treatment which is equally entertaining and
effectual. The physician of the soul is aware that his patient will
receive no nourishment unless he has been cleaned out; and the soul of
the Great King himself, if he has not undergone this purification, is
unclean and impure.
And who are the ministers of the purification? Sophists I may not call
them. Yet they bear about the same likeness to Sophists as the dog,
who is the gentlest of animals, does to the wolf, who is the fiercest.
Comparisons are slippery things; but for the present let us assume the
resemblance of the two, which may probably be disallowed hereafter.
And so, from division comes purification; and from this, mental
purification; and from mental purification, instruction; and from
instruction, education; and from education, the nobly-descended art
of Sophistry, which is engaged in the detection of conceit. I do not
however think that we have yet found the Sophist, or that his will
ultimately prove to be the desired art of education; but neither do I
think that he can long escape me, for every way is blocked. Before we
make the final assault, let us take breath, and reckon up the many forms
which he has assumed: (1) he was the paid hunter of wealth and birth;
(2) he was the trader in the goods of the soul; (3) he was the retailer
of them; (4) he was the manufacturer of his own learned wares; (5)
he was the disputant; and (6) he was the purger away of
prejudices--although this latter point is admitted to be doubtful.
Now, there must surely be something wrong in the professor of any art
having so many names and kinds of knowledge. Does not the very number of
them imply that the nature of his art is not understood? And that we
may not be involved in the misunderstanding, let us observe which of
his characteristics is the most prominent. Above all things he is a
disputant. He will dispute and teach others to dispute about things
visible and invisible--about man, about the gods, about politics, about
law, about wrestling, about all things. But can he know all things? 'He
cannot.' How then can he dispute satisfactorily with any one who knows?
'Impossible.' Then what is the trick of his art, and why does he receive
money from his admirers? 'Because he is believed by them to know all
things.' You mean to say that he seems to have a knowledge of them?
'Yes.'
Suppose a person were to say, not that he would dispute about all
things, but that he would make all things, you and me, and all other
creatures, the earth and the heavens and the gods, and would sell them
all for a few pence--this would be a great jest; but not greater than if
he said that he knew all things, and could teach them in a short time,
and at a small cost. For all imitation is a jest, and the most graceful
form of jest. Now the painter is a man who professes to make all things,
and children, who see his pictures at a distance, sometimes take them
for realities: and the Sophist pretends to know all things, and he, too,
can deceive young men, who are still at a distance from the truth, not
through their eyes, but through their ears, by the mummery of words,
and induce them to believe him. But as they grow older, and come into
contact with realities, they learn by experience the futility of his
pretensions. The Sophist, then, has not real knowledge; he is only an
imitator, or image-maker.
And now, having got him in a corner of the dialectical net, let us
divide and subdivide until we catch him. Of image-making there are two
kinds,--the art of making likenesses, and the art of making appearances.
The latter may be illustrated by sculpture and painting, which often use
illusions, and alter the proportions of figures, in order to adapt
their works to the eye. And the Sophist also uses illusions, and
his imitations are apparent and not real. But how can anything be an
appearance only? Here arises a difficulty which has always beset the
subject of appearances. For the argument is asserting the existence
of not-being. And this is what the great Parmenides was all his life
denying in prose and also in verse. 'You will never find,' he says,
'that not-being is.' And the words prove themselves! Not-being cannot be
attributed to any being; for how can any being be wholly abstracted from
being? Again, in every predication there is an attribution of singular
or plural. But number is the most real of all things, and cannot be
attributed to not-being. Therefore not-being cannot be predicated or
expressed; for how can we say 'is,' 'are not,' without number?
And now arises the greatest difficulty of all. If not-being is
inconceivable, how can not-being be refuted? And am I not contradicting
myself at this moment, in speaking either in the singular or the plural
of that to which I deny both plurality and unity? You, Theaetetus, have
the might of youth, and I conjure you to exert yourself, and, if you
can, to find an expression for not-being which does not imply being and
number. 'But I cannot.' Then the Sophist must be left in his hole. We
may call him an image-maker if we please, but he will only say, 'And
pray, what is an image?' And we shall reply, 'A reflection in the water,
or in a mirror'; and he will say, 'Let us shut our eyes and open our
minds; what is the common notion of all images?' 'I should answer, Such
another, made in the likeness of the true.' Real or not real? 'Not real;
at least, not in a true sense.' And the real 'is,' and the not-real 'is
not'? 'Yes.' Then a likeness is really unreal, and essentially not.
Here is a pretty complication of being and not-being, in which the
many-headed Sophist has entangled us. He will at once point out that
he is compelling us to contradict ourselves, by affirming being of
not-being. I think that we must cease to look for him in the class of
imitators.
But ought we to give him up? 'I should say, certainly not.' Then I fear
that I must lay hands on my father Parmenides; but do not call me a
parricide; for there is no way out of the difficulty except to show
that in some sense not-being is; and if this is not admitted, no one can
speak of falsehood, or false opinion, or imitation, without falling into
a contradiction. You observe how unwilling I am to undertake the task;
for I know that I am exposing myself to the charge of inconsistency in
asserting the being of not-being. But if I am to make the attempt, I
think that I had better begin at the beginning.
Lightly in the days of our youth, Parmenides and others told us tales
about the origin of the universe: one spoke of three principles warring
and at peace again, marrying and begetting children; another of
two principles, hot and cold, dry and moist, which also formed
relationships. There were the Eleatics in our part of the world, saying
that all things are one; whose doctrine begins with Xenophanes, and is
even older. Ionian, and, more recently, Sicilian muses speak of a one
and many which are held together by enmity and friendship, ever parting,
ever meeting. Some of them do not insist on the perpetual strife, but
adopt a gentler strain, and speak of alternation only. Whether they are
right or not, who can say? But one thing we can say--that they went on
their way without much caring whether we understood them or not. For
tell me, Theaetetus, do you understand what they mean by their assertion
of unity, or by their combinations and separations of two or more
principles? I used to think, when I was young, that I knew all about
not-being, and now I am in great difficulties even about being.
Let us proceed first to the examination of being. Turning to the dualist
philosophers, we say to them: Is being a third element besides hot and
cold? or do you identify one or both of the two elements with being?
At any rate, you can hardly avoid resolving them into one. Let us next
interrogate the patrons of the one. To them we say: Are being and one
two different names for the same thing? But how can there be two names
when there is nothing but one? Or you may identify them; but then the
name will be either the name of nothing or of itself, i.e. of a name.
Again, the notion of being is conceived of as a whole--in the words
of Parmenides, 'like every way unto a rounded sphere.' And a whole has
parts; but that which has parts is not one, for unity has no parts. Is
being, then, one, because the parts of being are one, or shall we say
that being is not a whole? In the former case, one is made up of parts;
and in the latter there is still plurality, viz. being, and a whole
which is apart from being. And being, if not all things, lacks something
of the nature of being, and becomes not-being. Nor can being ever have
come into existence, for nothing comes into existence except as a whole;
nor can being have number, for that which has number is a whole or sum
of number. These are a few of the difficulties which are accumulating
one upon another in the consideration of being.
We may proceed now to the less exact sort of philosophers. Some of
them drag down everything to earth, and carry on a war like that of the
giants, grasping rocks and oaks in their hands. Their adversaries defend
themselves warily from an invisible world, and reduce the substances
of their opponents to the minutest fractions, until they are lost in
generation and flux. The latter sort are civil people enough; but the
materialists are rude and ignorant of dialectics; they must be taught
how to argue before they can answer. Yet, for the sake of the argument,
we may assume them to be better than they are, and able to give an
account of themselves. They admit the existence of a mortal living
creature, which is a body containing a soul, and to this they would not
refuse to attribute qualities--wisdom, folly, justice and injustice. The
soul, as they say, has a kind of body, but they do not like to assert
of these qualities of the soul, either that they are corporeal, or that
they have no existence; at this point they begin to make distinctions.
'Sons of earth,' we say to them, 'if both visible and invisible
qualities exist, what is the common nature which is attributed to them
by the term "being" or "existence"?' And, as they are incapable of
answering this question, we may as well reply for them, that being is
the power of doing or suffering. Then we turn to the friends of ideas:
to them we say, 'You distinguish becoming from being?' 'Yes,' they will
reply. 'And in becoming you participate through the bodily senses, and
in being, by thought and the mind?' 'Yes.' And you mean by the word
'participation' a power of doing or suffering? To this they answer--I
am acquainted with them, Theaetetus, and know their ways better than you
do--that being can neither do nor suffer, though becoming may. And we
rejoin: Does not the soul know? And is not 'being' known? And are not
'knowing' and 'being known' active and passive? That which is known is
affected by knowledge, and therefore is in motion. And, indeed, how
can we imagine that perfect being is a mere everlasting form, devoid of
motion and soul? for there can be no thought without soul, nor can soul
be devoid of motion. But neither can thought or mind be devoid of some
principle of rest or stability. And as children say entreatingly,
'Give us both,' so the philosopher must include both the moveable and
immoveable in his idea of being. And yet, alas! he and we are in the
same difficulty with which we reproached the dualists; for motion and
rest are contradictions--how then can they both exist? Does he who
affirms this mean to say that motion is rest, or rest motion? 'No; he
means to assert the existence of some third thing, different from them
both, which neither rests nor moves.' But how can there be anything
which neither rests nor moves? Here is a second difficulty about being,
quite as great as that about not-being. And we may hope that any light
which is thrown upon the one may extend to the other.
Leaving them for the present, let us enquire what we mean by giving many
names to the same thing, e.g. white, good, tall, to man; out of which
tyros old and young derive such a feast of amusement. Their meagre minds
refuse to predicate anything of anything; they say that good is good,
and man is man; and that to affirm one of the other would be making
the many one and the one many. Let us place them in a class with our
previous opponents, and interrogate both of them at once. Shall we
assume (1) that being and rest and motion, and all other things,
are incommunicable with one another? or (2) that they all have
indiscriminate communion? or (3) that there is communion of some and not
of others? And we will consider the first hypothesis first of all.
(1) If we suppose the universal separation of kinds, all theories alike
are swept away; the patrons of a single principle of rest or of motion,
or of a plurality of immutable ideas--all alike have the ground cut from
under them; and all creators of the universe by theories of composition
and division, whether out of or into a finite or infinite number of
elemental forms, in alternation or continuance, share the same fate.
Most ridiculous is the discomfiture which attends the opponents of
predication, who, like the ventriloquist Eurycles, have the voice that
answers them in their own breast. For they cannot help using the words
'is,' 'apart,' 'from others,' and the like; and their adversaries are
thus saved the trouble of refuting them. But (2) if all things have
communion with all things, motion will rest, and rest will move; here is
a reductio ad absurdum. Two out of the three hypotheses are thus seen to
be false. The third (3) remains, which affirms that only certain things
communicate with certain other things. In the alphabet and the scale
there are some letters and notes which combine with others, and some
which do not; and the laws according to which they combine or are
separated are known to the grammarian and musician. And there is a
science which teaches not only what notes and letters, but what classes
admit of combination with one another, and what not. This is a noble
science, on which we have stumbled unawares; in seeking after the
Sophist we have found the philosopher. He is the master who discerns
one whole or form pervading a scattered multitude, and many such wholes
combined under a higher one, and many entirely apart--he is the true
dialectician. Like the Sophist, he is hard to recognize, though for the
opposite reasons; the Sophist runs away into the obscurity of not-being,
the philosopher is dark from excess of light. And now, leaving him, we
will return to our pursuit of the Sophist.