156 



PROFESSOR THOMPSON, ON THE GENUINENESS OF 



From the dicta of Parmenides which I have been endeavouring to explain, the Eleatic 

 Stranger in the dialogue proceeds to deduce various conclusions: the most startling of which 

 is, that Being is, on Eleatic principles, identical with Not-being, — that the worshipt ov is after 

 all a pitiful ntj ov^ I He is enabled to effect this reductio ad absurdum by the incautious 

 proceeding of Parmenides, who instead of entrenching himself in the safe ground of an identical 

 proposition, and thence defying the world to eject him, must needs invest his Ens with a 

 variety of attributes calculated to exalt it in dignity and importance. It is " unbegotten," it 

 is " solitary," it is " immoveable," it is " a whole," it is even " like unto a massive orbed 

 sphere^." {Soph. 246 e.) In one of these unguarded outworks the Stranger effects a lodgment, 

 and by a series of well-concerted dialectical operations, succeeds, as we have seen, in carrying 

 the citadel. 



Having shewn the Nothingness of the Eleatic Ontology, the Stranger proceeds to pass 

 in review two other systems of speculative philosophy. *' We have now," he says, " discussed — 

 ■ not thoroughly it is true, but sufficiently for our present purpose, the tenets of those who pre- 

 tend to define strictly the oi' and the fir] ov : we must now take a view of those who talk 

 differently on this subject. When we have done with all these, we shall see the justice of our 

 conclusion that the conception of Being is involved in quite as much perplexity as that of Not- 

 being'." Of one of the two sects who " talk differently," I venture to hold an opinion 

 varying from that generally received — an opinion formed many years ago in opposition to that 

 advanced by Schleiermacher and adopted without sufficient consideration by Brandis, Heindorf 

 and others. Careful students of Plato are aware that his dialogues abound with matter 

 evidently polemical, to the drift of which his text seems on the surface to offer no clue. I 

 mean that, like Aristotle, he frequently omits to name the philosophers whose tenets he 

 combats : characterising them, at the same time, in a manner which to a living contemporary, 

 versed in the disputes of the schools and personally acquainted with their professors, would at 

 once suggest the true object of his attack*. Such well-informed persons constituted doubtless 

 the bulk of Plato's readers and formed the public for whom he principally wrote. It was they 

 who applauded or writhed under his sarcasms, as they happened to hold with him or his 

 adversaries. It is to place himself in the position of this small but educated public that the 

 patient student of Plato should aspire: neglecting no study of contemporary monuments, and 

 no research among the scarcely less valuable notices which the learned Greeks of later times 

 have left scattered in their writings. Of these notices, emanating originally from authorities 



* Soph. 245 c, 964 Bekk. : /ixij oi'tos &e ye to irapdirau 



TOV o\oVt TaifTU T€ Tui/TU VTTitp^fl T(p OVTt, Kui TTpOS TlS fit} 



tlvat fiiiS' uu yei/etrQat Trore ov. 



' irdvTo^eu euKUKXou (ripaipij^ evaXiyKtov oyKta. I'arm. 

 V. 103. 



** 'Iv €K irdvTiav XStufjiev OTt Td 5lt tov fxij ovtov ovdiv 

 eviroptvTepov'eiTTeil' o tc ttot* effTlj/. p. 245 E. 



* This reticence, of which it is rot difficult to divine the 

 motives, is most carefully practised in the case of the living 

 celebrities who claimed like himself to be disciples of Socrates, 

 8uch as Euclides, Aristippus and Antisthenes. A cursory 

 reader of Plato has no conception that such men existed as the 

 heads of rival sects with which the Platonists of the Academy 



were engaged in perpetual controversy. On the other hand, 

 Plato never scruples to name the dead, nor perhaps tliose living 

 personages with whom he stood in no relation of common pur- 

 suits or common friendships, e.g. Lysias, Gorgias, &c. The 

 Pyihagoreans, though remote in place, were his friends and 

 correspondents, and in speaking of them he observes the same 

 rule as in the case of his living Athenian contemporaries, in- 

 dicating without expressly naming them. Thus, in the Poli- 

 licus, p. 285, they are merely denoted as (so/ui//ol, " ingenious 

 persons." This, by the way, is a passage of great importance, 

 as indicating the limits within which Plato '"pythagorized," 

 and the particulars in which he dissented from his Italic 

 friends. 



