Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/151

96 must be faced by not-Being as the other term; nothing else would yield an opposition. We cannot oppose Being to Being; and therefore not-Being is the only counter-term to Being.

21. The antithesis, then, of the one and the many, the intelligible and the sensible, the permanent and the changeable, has passed in the Eleatic school into that of Being and not-Being. The next movement of thought in dealing with this relation is the question, Does not-Being exist? Is there any not-Being at all? It is difficult, I believe it is impossible, to state in precise terms how the Eleatics answered this question. In the first part of his poem Parmenides seems to maintain that there is no not-Being; in the second part of it he accords to not-Being a sort of spurious existence. In fact, answer the question in either way, and the difficulties that arise are insuperable. Suppose, in the first place, we say that there is no not-Being, then the whole material world, all sensible existence, is annihilated, for this is not-Being. The world of sense stands logically opposed to Being in the fundamental antithesis of thought, as the particular to the universal, the sensible to the intelligible, the many to the one. This solution, then, which abolishes the one member of the antithesis, abolishes likewise the material world. The other member, Being, to wit, alone is left. And what sort of universe is this? It is a universe in which there is no plurality, no diversity, no difference of one thing from another,