Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/43

 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PLATO'S PARMESIDKS. 27 to admit that the One is so utterly unreal that it is not even so much as the " baseless fabric" of a philosopher's imagina- tion. And this conclusion, though inevitable on the pre- misses, sounds rather strained even in the mouth of an avowed Pluralist, while in an Eleatic or a Megarian it would be " rank blasphemy ". Our original task has now drawn practically to its con- clusion. There remain only two brief and subsidiary hy- potheses to analyse. We have still to ask ourselves (1) How does the recognition of TO eVs partial participation in negation affect our knowledge of rd aa? (2) Even if we agree, in consequence of the conclusions of 1 and 7, to give up the existence of the One or the Ideas altogether, is it not still open to us to take our stand on the reality and knowability of the sensible world ? Why, it may be asked, should the proof that an Eleatic or semi-Eleatic One is a vox nihili establish the existence of a Platonic One ? Why not dispense with a One, or a systematic unity of the world, altogether and content ourselves with such knowledge as we can get of the manifold and infinitely varying world of sense-particulars ? In hypothesis 8 we have Plato's answer to (1) ; in hypothesis 9 the final refutation of (2). Hypothesis 8 (164 B-165 D). Eeverting to the pre- supposition of 6 we ask, "If the One can be subject to negative predicates, and so far non-existent, what con- sequences does this entail upon ra aa ? " Or, translating into rather less indefinite language, " If w r e abstract from the world of perception, or from any subordinate part of it, its character of systematic unity, and consider only the aspect of multiplicity, what appearance will it present to us ? " This question, it must be carefully observed, is quite different in spirit though not in form from that which is propounded in the one hypothesis which is yet to follow. There the absolute unreality of ideal or systematic unity, here its merely relative non-existence, is the presupposition of the argument. That hypothesis raises the question what the world looks like, or ought to look like, to a man who flatly denies that it possesses any ideal unity at all, and is consistent in his denial ; here the question is how the world will appear to us so long as we fail to take into account, not deny, its systematic unity. Consequently, while we shall find in the ninth hypothesis the paradoxical conclusions of a rigorously consistent pluralism, we have in the eighth an acute analysis of the inconsequences in which everyday "common-sense" reflexion on the course