Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/35

 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PLATO'S PARMENIDES. 19 shall find, the sense in which " not-being" is attributed to the One in hypotheses 6 and 8. Thus the relations of the two negative to the two positive premisses of Parmenides will be these : the qualified negation of 6 and 8 is compatible with, and is in fact the necessary complement of, the quali- fied assertion of 2, 3, 4, but is the contradictory of the absolute affirmation of 1, which it therefore excludes ; the absolute negation of 6 and 9 is the contradictory of the modified assertion of 2, and the contrary of the absolute assertion of 1, and consequently excludes them both. Thus taking 1, 2, 6 and 7 each as representative of the pair of hypotheses to which it belongs, we may say : If 1 be true, 2 is false, 6 is false, 7 is false. If 1 be false, either 2 and 6 are true or 1 is true. If 2 be true, 1 is false, 6 is true, 7 is false. If 2 be false, 6 is false, and either 1 or 7 must be true. This table may be of use to us in fixing the point of view from which each of the negative hypotheses is conceived. We now proceed to examine and interpret each in detail in the same way as we have done hypotheses 1-5. Hypothesis 6 (160 B-163 B). The sixth hypothesis is, after the second of which it is the inseparable complement, the most important contribution furnished by our dialogue to a positive theory of the relation between the world's unity and its multiplicity. It is also, owing to the un- certainty of the text at one or two critical points, the only one of the remaining arguments which presents the slightest difficulty to a reader who has already grasped the significance of what has preceded. I shall therefore follow the steps of the reasoning more closely than I have done in the case of any of the hypotheses since the second, and I must plead the necessity of the case as my excuse for thus prolonging an essay which has already attained a somewhat unreadable length. And first we must make sure that we rightly understand the meaning of the proposition with which we are starting, el TO ev fj,tj etrrL and its relation to the el TO ev eo-rt with which we have hitherto been concerned. We start then from the proposition that " the One is non-existent". But the sequel makes it quite clear that what is meant is not that the One has no existence at all, but simply that it is not the only reality, and that it can consequently have negative predicates attached to it. This supposition can be stated in various ways, as e.g. "There is other reality besides the One," "the One can be negatively determined," and, in still more technically