Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/149

94 would understand you. He would understand you because he necessarily knows and understands that his own thought is. He would understand what you by Being (remember I am supposing him to be an intelligence, and therefore able to think, although he has no such senses as ours); he would understand this, because the thought of being is itself being. Being, then, is a wider universal—that is to say, it is more a truth for all intellect, for intellect in its very essence—than any principle set forth in the Ionic school, than water, or infinite matter, or air. It is a wider universal even than number, the principle of Pythagoreans. It may possibly be a question whether an intelligence might not work without thinking number; but it can be no question whether an intelligence can work without thinking Being. Deprive it of this category, and you annihilate its intelligent functions. It may turn out hereafter that Being is only a half category, only half a necessary thought. Meanwhile, however, we accept it as a necessary conception of reason (without inquiring whether it be a whole or only a half conception); we accept it as a true universal, as that in which all has unity, as a truth valid for all intellect. And we regard the system of Parmenides, in which this truth was first enunciated, as a true philosophy, inasmuch as it comes up, to some extent at least, to the standard of our definition.

20. Secondly, of the relation of Being and not-Being