492 ADDITIONS. 



from the most characteristic of the Platonic Dialogues. In these, Soc- 

 rates is represented as finally successful in refuting or routing his ad- 

 versaries, however confident their tone and however popular their as- 

 sertions. They are angered or humbled ; he retains his good temper 

 and his air of superiority, and when they are exhausted, he sums up 

 in his own way. 



In the Parmenides, on the contrary, every thing is the reverse of 

 this. Parmenides and Zeno exchange good-humored smiles at Soc- 

 rates' criticism, when the bystanders expect them to grow angry. 

 They listen to Socrates while he propounds Plato's doctrine of Ideas : 

 and reply to him with solid arguments which he does not answer, and 

 which have never yet been answered. Parmenides, in a patronizing 

 way, lets him off; and having done this, being much entreated, he 

 pronounces a discourse concerning the One and the Many ; which, ob- 

 scure as it may seem to us, was obviously intended to be irrefutable : 

 and during the whole of this part of the Dialogue, the friend of 

 Socrates appears only as a passive respondent, saying Yes or No as 

 the assertions of Parmenides require him to do; just in the same 

 way in which the opponents of Socrates are represented in other Dia- 

 logues. 



These circumstances, to which other historical difficulties might be 

 added, seem to show plainly that the Parmenides must be regarded as 

 an Eleatic, not as a Platonic Dialogue ; — as composed to confute, not 

 to assert, the Platonic doctrine of Ideas. 



The Platonic doctrine of Ideas has an important bearing upon the 

 philosophy of Science, and was suggested in a great measure by the 

 progress which the Greeks had really made in Geometry, Astronomy, 

 and other Sciences, as I shall elsewhere endeavor to show. This doc- 

 trine has been recommended in our own time, 1 as containing " a mighty 

 substance of imperishable truth." It cannot fail to be interesting to 

 see in what manner the doctrine is presented by those who thus judge 

 of it. The following is the statement of its leading features which they 

 give us. 



Man's soul is made to contain not merely a consistent scheme of its 

 own notions, but a direct apprehension of real and eternal laws beyond 

 it. These real and eternal laws are things intelligible, and not things 

 sensible. The laws, impressed upon creation by its Creator, and ap- 

 prehended by man, are something equally distinct from the Creator 



1 A. Butler's Lectures, Second Series, Lect. viii. p. 132. 



