Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/499

 A STUDY OF PLATONIC TERMINOLOGY. 485 Politicus), like Galileo, and Huyghens in later times, of scientific inquiry, to the efforts of one who is learning to read or to decipher a writing. In connexion with this comparison, the eiSr) are described as the elements (<rrotxeia) which, by their transposition {fjirari0e/ji,vai) and combination (a-v/j.ni'yvva-dai) give rise to those more complex groups (o-uXXa/Scu, o-u/ATrXo/cat) which are concrete facts (Politic., 278, B, C ; Sophistes, 253). In this Plato is pretty near to conceiving the analogy between the relation of a whole to its parts and the relation that subsists, on the other hand, among the characters of a species and those corresponding to the different genera to which it belongs ; an analogy expressed by Aristotle so clearly and explicitly in the fourth book of the Metaphysics, when he says that the name of parts may be given as well to the various classes into which a genus is divided as to the single characters that compose the definition of a species (en ra eV -rw Xoyft) TO> 8r/ovvrt eicacrrov Kal ravra /jbopLa rov oov), and that, in the first sense, the species is a part of the genus, in the second, the genus is a part of the species : Sib TO 761/0? rov etooix, Kd(, yLtepo? r yerai, aXX&>? Se TO 64009 ToO (Metaphys., iv., 23).