Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/498

 484 G. VAIL ATI : them. Similar remarks are repeated with regard to other divisions, e.g., that of animals into two classes, one including men, and the other all other animals, as if the latter became a class solely by the fact that there is at our disposal a single word ("beasts," BrjpLa) to denote them all. With the same right, he adds, any other animal, e.g., the cranes, if they were to occupy themselves with classifications, might divide animals into two classes, one including themselves, and the other all the rest, not excluding men. No less suggestive is the other example of defective division, which is also adduced by Plato, viz. : that of the man who should divide numbers into two classes, one com- posed of those under, e.g., ten thousand, and the other in- cluding all the others. By citing in contrast to this the other division of numbers into even and uneven, or of human beings into men and women, he seems to wish to indicate, as by the phrase : dividere icar' eiSij, still more than divisions according to certain properties, he means divisions according to qualities which are important because of their consequences. Inability to divide KO,T eiSrj is compared in the Phcedrus to the inability of the bad cook who does not know how to cut meat without breaking bones. From the point of view of terminology, that passage of the Politicus is important in which a difference of meaning is established between el6o<? and /*e/309, by assigning to the term /tepo? the office of denoting more particularly the classes which do not satisfy the requirements of the Siaip (Politicus, 262 B), by which he pre- scribes that every class ought to be determined by the presence of some characteristic common to all the objects that belong to it, and to them alone. In the Politicus as well as in the Republic, the words f^eprj, popia, are used to denote the various individual qualities which contribute to con- stitute one complex quality, e.g. (Politic., 290 G) mention is made of Siaicovov re^vij^ [Mopia, and hence they assume a meaning which is very nearly akin to that which is attri- buted to them when they are used in speaking of parts of the connotation of a term. The image of the general characteristics as constituent parts or ingredients of the objects and concrete facts (TT pay par a), already implied, as we have seen, in the phrases expressing participation, is brought still more clearly into relief by the comparison to which Plato often has recourse (Thecetetus,