Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/328

 314 by calling him the inventor of dialectic, which is just the art of arguing, not from true premisses, but from premisses admitted by the other side. The theory of Parmenides had led to conclusions which contradicted the evidence of the senses, and Zeno's object was not to bring fresh proofs of the theory itself, but simply to show that his opponents' view led to contradictions of a precisely similar nature.

158. That Zeno's dialectic was mainly directed against the Pythagoreans is certainly suggested by Plato's statement, that it was addressed to the adversaries of Parmenides, who held that things were "a many." Zeller holds, indeed that it was merely the popular form of the belief that things are many that Zeno set himself to confute; but it is surely not true that ordinary people believe things to be "a many" in the sense required. Plato tells us that the premisses of Zeno's arguments were the beliefs of the adversaries of Parmenides, and the postulate from which all his contradictions are derived is the view that space, and therefore body, is made up of a number of discrete units, which is just the Pythagorean doctrine. We know from Plato that Zeno's book was the work of his youth. It follows that he must have written it in Italy, and the Pythagoreans are the only people who can have criticised the views of Parmenides there and at that date.

It will be noted how much clearer the historical position of Zeno becomes if we follow Plato in assigning him to a later date than is usual. We have first Parmenides, then the