Page:Philosophical & Other Essays.pdf/75

 ARISTOTLE'S CRITICISM OF THE ELEATICS. Parmenides, venerable and aweful, as in Homeric language he may be called; him I should be ashamed to approach in a spirit unworthy of him " 42. It follows that Plato must have taken trouble to at least under. stand the man whom he so much reverenced, and that therefore, his testimony may be regarded as having a peculiar value. According to Plato, Parmenides is the father of Ontologism. He tells us in the Sophist that Parmenides regarded Not-Being as unspeakable, incon- ceivable, irrational, meaning thereby that in order to exist, anything must be thought, conceived, and reasoned about ¹3, a statement which agrees so well with the assertion of Parmenides himself that the path of Not-Being must be regarded as unspeakble and unthinkable ", and must therefore be severely left aside, as it is not the path of truth :-

κέκριται δ᾽ οὖν ὥσπερ ἀνάγκη, την μὲν ἐᾶν ἀνόητον, ἀνώνυμον, οὐ γὰρ ἀληθὴς ἐστὶν ὁδός.

It is very unfortunate that Prof. Burnet does not see that the identical meaning which he finds in the two questions-Is it or is it not, and Can it be thought or not, "5-lays the axe at the root of his materialistic inter-, pretation, and supports the ontological meaning which Plato and Aristotle find in Parmenides. Aristotle very clearly recognises the conceptual character of Parmenides' philosophy. In his Physics, for example, Aristotle definitely lays down that the Parmenidean doctrine refers to concepts, and hence a discussion of

42. Plato, Theaetetus, 183 E. (Jowett's translation). 43. Plato, Sophist 238 C. 44. Parmenides' Poem II. 72-74. 45. Burnet, Thales to Plato, p. 67.,