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 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PLATO'S PARMENIDES. 33 be better summed up than in the following sentence (Soph., 249 c), part of which I have already quoted elsewhere. " The philosopher . . . must then, as it seems, refuse to be persuaded, whether by believers in the One or in a plurality of Ideas, that the universe is motionless, while to those who make motion ultimate he must not even listen ; he must say, to borrow a phrase from the children's game, that the Keal and the Universe are both ' moving and not moving (TOJ Srj (f>io<? eoifcev, avdyKf} 8td Tavra piJTe TOiV ei> rj Kal ra 7rod eiSr] ev, TO irav ea-rrj/cbs diro- 8e^cr0ai, TOJV Se av Travra'xf) TO bv KIVOVVTWV ^Se TO Trapdjrav dicoveiv, aa Kara rrjv TWV irai^wv ev^rjv, oaa dtcivrjTa Kal KeKivTjfteva, TO 6v re ical TO Trav ^vvafJifyoTepa eyeiv). There are two more points to which I should like to refer very briefly, and I will then bring this essay to a close. I have throughout made a historical assumption which perhaps calls for a word of justification. As far as the meaning of the dialogue is concerned it is, of course, of very minor importance who was its author and who were the persons against whom the polemic was directed. For the purposes of interpretation we have to take the argu- ment in its universal sense, and so long as we are successful in ascertaining what theory it upholds and what theory it attacks, it cannot much matter to us as commentators on the Parmenides, though it would to an editor of the " Pla- tonis Opera Omnia," whether it was Plato, or another, who advocated the one set of conclusions and combated the other. I have however all along assumed (a) that the conclusions of the dialogue are those of Plato, and (6), though less confidently, that the views which are criticised unfavourably in the first part and most of the second part are those of the Megarians. On both these points I ought perhaps to say something in my own defence. (a) As to the first point, it will be noticed that the only other "Platonic" composition of which I have made any considerable use for the elucidation of the Parmenides is the Sophistes, a work the authenticity of which admittedly stands or falls with that of the present dialogue. It might therefore seem perfectly consistent with my interpretation of the dialogue to hold that it is either spurious, or at any rate together with the Sophistes represents an exceptional and merely temporary development of Plato's thought. As against both these views, the full consideration of which would require a second essay at least as long as the present, I will just add two references, one to the Ptiilebus and one 3