THE SOPHISTA' OF PLATO, &c. 



155 



diction is in fact no contradiction, but that there is a sense in which the fxtj ov is, and in 

 which the ov is noi'." In this passage the Eleatic, who is Plato's mouthpiece, formally declares 

 war against the logical system of his master Parmenides, in one of its most vital parts. His 

 words, I conceive, admit of no other explanation. A question here suggests itself as to the mean- 

 ing of this Eleatic denial of the conceivableness of non-entia. " You can never learn," says 

 Parmenides, " that things which are not are''." Does he mean to forbid the use of negative 

 propositions ? His words will bear, I think, no other sense, and so, as we shall see, Plato 

 understands them. In fact two misconceptions, both arising from the ambiguity of language, 

 seem to lie at the root of the Eleatic Logic. Parmenides first confounds the verb-substantive, 

 as a copula, with the verb-substantive denoting Existence or the Summum Genus of the 

 Schoolmen. He secondly assumes that in any simple proposition the copula implies the 

 identity of subject and predicate, instead of denoting an act of the mind by which the one 

 is conceived as included in the other, in the relation of individual or species to genus. It 

 may seem strange that so great a man should have thus stumbled in limine. But enough 

 is left of his writings to enable us to perceive that he was notwithstanding a profound, or if 

 that be questioned, certainly a consistent thinicer. In the first place he altogether repudiates the 

 distinction of ' subjective ' and ' objective.' " Thought," he says, " and that for which thought 

 exists are one and the same thing';" and more distinctly still, "Thought and being are the 

 same," to yo-p avTo voeiv ecTTiv re Kai elvai : and, -^pri to Xeyeiv Te voetv t eov enfievai*, 

 " Speech and thought constitute reality." A man who thus thought must therefore have 

 repudiated the antithesis between Logic and Physics, between Formal and Real Science, a 

 distinction which appears to us elementary and self-evident. Logic wa^ to Parmenides 

 Metaphysic, and Metaphysic Logic. That which is conceivable alone is, and that is which is 

 conceivable. The abstraction "To Be" is the same as Absolute Existence. The "Ens 

 logicum " and the " Ens reale " are the same thing. The only certain proposition is the 

 identical one " Being is," for " not-Being is Nothing*." Hence the Formula which served 

 as the Eleatic watchword: ev Tci iravTa, " unum omnia." 



If it be asked, what did Parmenides make of the outward universe? we are at no loss 

 for an answer. He denied its claim to reality, or any participation of reality, in toto". And on 

 the principles of his Logic he was bound so to do. For every sensible object, or group of 

 sensible objects, being distinct from every other object or group of objects, is at once an Ens 

 and a Non-ens, it is this and it is not that, e. g. If Socrates is a man, Socrates is not a beast : 

 for the genus "man " excludes the genus "beast." {avOpwrro^ eVrt ntj 9tjpiov, as Parmenides 

 would have expressed it.) But a /uj) Orjpiov is, according to his logic, a (dj ov; therefore all so- 

 called ovra are at the same time fi^ ovtu: non-existent, and therefore inconceivable, and so 

 altogether out of the domain of Science. 



* Tow Tov -Trarpos HapfieviSov \6yov dvayKaTov tlfxlif 

 dfX.vvofi€ifot9 etTTat ^affavt^eiv, Kal l3iaX^€adtti to xe fiij ov 

 (lis eo-Ti KaTti T(, Kai to 01/ av Trdkiv a!s evn irrt. p. 241 D, 

 Comp. Arist. Soph. El. c. 5, § 1, quoted above. 



* oil yap fit'tiroTe tovto day^, elvai fi,} eovra, 



* Tai/T&v S' €<TTt voeiv Te Ka\ ovveKev etrTt v6r]fia. Frag, 



V. 94, MuUach. 



* Frag. v. 43, ed. Mullach. 



' SCTTi yap elvai, piriSev i' ouk elvau 



ovdev yap ij effriv »/ eoTai 



'AWo 'TrapcK tov eovToi. Ibid. 

 « Ibid. V. no. 



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