Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/34

 18 A. E. TAYLOR : the Many also 'V And though Plato expresses neither ap- proval or disapproval of this result, his identification of it with the conclusion of 1, justifies us in mentally adding what was there said in so many words, 77 Svvarov ovv irepl TO ev ravd^ OVTWS e^etv ; OVKOVV epoiye Sorcei (142 A). Putting together the positive results of 2, 3, 4, and the negative results of 1 and 5, we may notice that there is up to a certain point a curious formal likeness between the two sets of conclusions. On either theory of the relation of unity to reality we have the result, as we have already seen, that each side of the antithesis of the One and the Many turns out to he identical with the other. But there is this differ- ence, that in the one case this result harmonises with the presuppositions from which it is drawn, in the other it is in flagrant contradiction with them. And this also, that in the one case the One and the Many coincide because each is the same concrete system, in the other because each is the same empty nonentity. Thus we may urge against the upholder of an Eleatic or Megarian unity of the world the unanswer- able argument : " Your own theory of the world involves as much as ours that mutual implication of opposites which you find so unthinkable : you will find yourself, if you will only reflect on your own assumptions, as fully committed as ourselves to the ultimate identity of the One and the Many. The difference between us is that you are further bound to identify them both with nothing, and such an identification is its own refutation." (6) We may now turn to the second or negative series of hypotheses (6-9), which, as we shall find, correspond to the foregoing positive hypotheses in their treatment of the idea of the world's unity. Corresponding to the unqualified assertion of hypotheses 1 and 5, " the only thing that is real is the One," we shall have the equally unqualified denial, " the One is absolutely unreal," and this proposition is, as we shall see, discussed with reference to the One itself in hypothesis 7 and with reference to the Manifold in hypothesis 9. Corresponding to the modified assertion of 2, 3, 4, " Unity is one predicate of reality," we shall have a similar qualified negation, " Unity is not the only charac- teristic of the Real," or what is the same thing " Unity can be determined by negative predicates," and this is, as we 1 We should surely accept Heindorf s conjectural addition of the words (cai TO. XXa vaaiiTus in this sentence. If we retain the vulgate we get the same sense, but the latter half of the conclusion is left to be inferred from the former.