THE ONE IN THE MANY, AND THE MANY IN THE ONE. 119 



as hair, mud, filtli ? " his answer is : " By no means. Indeed 

 the case of such makes me sometimes tremble even for the 

 others. At present I devote my attention to those " (i.e., moral 

 and intellectual) " just admitted." Here Socrates probably 

 represents Plato in his early immature philosophising days. 

 Parmenides pointed to him that his theory would be incomplete 

 unless it admitted the ideas in every branch of knowledge, and 

 Plato appears to have been convinced by the argument of the 

 Eleatic, and to have become " a consistent idealist." The 

 mature philosopher may have believed that ideas of unworthy " 

 things were in the mind of the good Creator when He created 

 them, and being Divine thoughts they could not be really 

 unworthy according to any accurate definition. 



0 Qualities may combine to form composite ideas, the number of 

 ^3 qualities varying, e.g., the idea of man " comprises a greater 

 § S. number of combined qualities than does that of " beauty," and 

 §" * the idea of you " more than that of " man." Opposite (or 

 3. contrary) qualities may coexist in the same subject, but will 

 p:>§ not combine* ; neither will qualities combine with contained 

 pi contraries — e.g., hot and cold are contraries, and, though hot 



^« water can become cold, hot cannot become cold, i.e., heat 

 ^ cannot become coldness — even and odd are contraries, there- 

 fore two and three, which always contain them, can never 

 combine respectively with odd and even. 

 1^ Plato affirms that the objects of the visible world must be 

 ^ accepted as existing, and that they are Many and One. They 

 § " participate " in the archetypal ideas after which they were 



1 created, and resemble them, the resemblance of any sense object 

 ^ to its idea being proportionate to the extent of its participation, 

 s- and the relation between them like that between a man's features 



and the expression of his face. In the Idea theory Plato saw a 

 ^ simple-unifying principle. The Ideas, although incorporeal, 

 g; were supposed by Plato to be substances to which parts could 



0 ° be added and from which parts could be taken. He was the 

 S';^ first philosopher to affirm the doctrine of Realism as a primary 



I postulate of cognition, the Ideas being the only true and know- 

 |- J able objective realities, self -existent and unchangeable, and one 



1 <^ of them correlating with each general term. Their genesis was 

 ^ the result of a combination of two factors — " 1. The One, the 



^ essentially One ; 2. The essentially Plural — the Indeterminate 



But on approach, one or both will perish or withdraw. 



