Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/30

 14 A. E. TAYLOB : up this train of thought, to the vexed and difficult question whether Plato does or does not mean to assert the origin in time of the sensible world. The discussion of this point would involve the detailed consideration of the Timceus and would lead us very far from our present field of inquiry ; we may therefore leave it on one side with the remark that the presuppositions of the present passage, taken by itself, would naturally lead to the affirmative answer to the question. And this concludes what I have to say on the third hypo- thesis. We have now closed our direct investigation into the conditions under which unity can be real, and we proceed to strengthen our convictions as to what those conditions are by a double inquiry into (a) the consequences which the affirmation of either conception of the One entails with respect to the attendant plurality, (6) the consequences which will follow, both for the One and for the Many, from the denial of each. (a) If the One exists what can we say of the Many ? This question is twice answered, in hypotheses 4 and 5 ; in the first case from the point of view of hypothesis 2, in the second from that of 1. And in the results of the inquiry we find complete confirmation of the conclusion at which we have already arrived. Once more we discover that on the one conception of what the world's unity implies affirmation and negation are alike possible, on the other alike impossible. We will proceed to set out the rival arguments, in which, after our study of what has gone before, we shall find no serious difficulties. Hypothesis 4 (157 B-159 B). If unity is real, what about plurality ? Our assumption is once more, as in 2, simply that unity is one predicate of a reality which can be other- wise determined. Thus the hypothesis does not deny, but rather for us who have the results of 2 fresh in our memory, affirms by implication the equal reality of multiplicity. We assume then that the Many of which we speak are real, and from this we go on to ask if we can say anything more definite about them. And we may say at once that while the Many are not absolutely identical with the One, yet they do not entirely fall outside it (ovSe yJt]v crreperai. ye iravrdtracn rov ei/o<? raXXa aa fiere^et Try, 157 c). Their diversity can no more exist apart from unity than the unity of the Real apart from diversity. For we must conceive of the " Mani- fold " as of a number of parts forming a whole. And the whole which is constituted by the manifold parts must be itself a unity. The parts are parts not of an indefinite