PLATO,

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CHAPTER II.

GENERAL REMARKS ON THE EARLIER PHILOSOPHERS — GROWTH OF DIALECTIC — ZENO AND GORGIAS.

Variety of sects and theories — multiplicity of individual authorities is the characteristic of Greek philosophy.

The first feeling of any reader accustomed to the astronomy and physics of the present century, on considering the various theories noticed in the preceding chapter, is a sort of astonishment that such theories should have been ever propounded or accepted as true. Yet there can be no doubt that they represent the best thoughts of sincere, contemplative, and ingenious men, furnished with as much knowledge of fact, and as good a method, as was then attainable. The record of what such men have received as scientific truth or probability, in different ages, is instructive in many ways, but in none more than in showing how essentially relative and variable are the conditions of human belief; how unfounded is the assumption of those modern philosophers who proclaim certain first truths or first principles as universal, intuitive, self-evident; how little any theorist can appreciate à priori the causes of belief in an age materially different from his own, or can lay down maxims as to what must be universally believed or universally disbelieved by all mankind. We shall have farther illustration of this truth as we proceed: here I only note variety of belief, even on the most fundamental points, as being the essential feature of Grecian philosophy even from its outset, long before the age of those who are usually denounced as the active sowers of discord, the Sophists and the professed disputants. Each philosopher followed his own individual reason, departing from traditional or established creeds, and incurring from the believing public more 85or less of obloquy; but no one among the philosophers acquired marked supremacy over the rest. There is no established philosophical orthodoxy, but a collection of Dissenters — ἄλλη δ’ ἄλλων γλῶσσα μεμιγμένη — small sects, each with its own following, each springing from a special individual as authority, each knowing itself to be only one among many.

These early theorists are not known from their own writings, which have been lost. Importance of the information of Aristotle about them.

It is a misfortune that we do not possess a complete work, or even considerable fragments, from any one of these philosophers, so as to know what their views were when stated by themselves, and upon what reasons they insisted. All that we know is derived from a few detached notices, in very many cases preserved by Aristotle; who, not content (like Plato) with simply following out his own vein of ideas, exhibits in his own writings much of that polymathy which he transmitted to the Peripatetics generally, and adverts often to the works of predecessors. Being a critic as well as a witness, he sometimes blends together inconveniently the two functions, and is accused (probably with reason to a certain extent) of making unfair reports; but if it were not for him, we should really know nothing of the Hellenic philosophers before Plato. It is curious to read the manner in which Aristotle speaks of these philosophical predecessors as “the ancients” (οἱ ἀρχαῖοι), and takes credit to his own philosophy for having attained a higher and more commanding point of view.1

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Abundance of speculative genius and invention — a memorable fact in the Hellenic mind.

During the century and a half between Thales and the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, we have passed in review twelve distinct schemes of philosophy — Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Herakleitus, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, the Apolloniate Diogenes, Leukippus, and Demokritus. Of most of these philosophers it may fairly be said that each speculated upon nature in an original vein of his own. Anaximenes and Diogenes, Xenophanes and Parmenides, Leukippus and Demokritus, may indeed be coupled together as kindred pairs yet by no means in such manner that the second of the two is a mere disciple and copyist of the first. Such abundance and variety of speculative genius and invention is one of the most memorable facts in the history of the Hellenic mind. The prompting of intelligent curiosity, the thirst for some plausible hypothesis to explain the Kosmos and its generation, the belief that a basis or point of departure might be found in the Kosmos itself, apart from those mythical personifications which dwelt both in the popular mind and in the poetical Theogonies, the mental effort required to select some known agency and to connect it by a chain of reasoning with the result — all this is a new phenomenon in the history of the human mind.

Difficulties which a Grecian philosopher had to overcome — prevalent view of Nature, established, impressive, and misleading.

An early Greek philosopher found nothing around him to stimulate or assist the effort, and much to obstruct it. He found Nature disguised under a diversified and omnipresent Polytheistic agency, eminently captivating and impressive to the emotions — at once mysterious and familiar — embodied in the ancient Theogonies, and penetrating deeply all the abundant epic and lyric poetry, the only literature of the time. It is perfectly true (as Aristotle remarks2) that Hesiod and the other theological poets, who referred everything to the generation and agency of the Gods, thought only of what was plausible to themselves, without enquiring whether it would 87appear equally plausible to their successors; a reproach which bears upon many subsequent philosophers also. The contemporary public, to whom they addressed themselves, knew no other way of conceiving Nature than under this religious and poetical view, as an aggregate of manifestations by divine personal agents, upon whose volition — sometimes signified beforehand by obscure warnings intelligible to the privileged interpreters, but often inscrutable — the turn of events depended. Thales and the other Ionic philosophers were the first who became dissatisfied with this point of view, and sought for some “causes and beginnings” more regular, knowable, and predictable. They fixed upon the common, familiar, widely-extended, material substances, water, air, fire, &c.; and they could hardly fix upon any others. Their attempt to find a scientific basis was unsuccessful; but the memorable fact consisted in their looking for one.

Views of the Ionic philosophers — compared with the more recent abstractions of Plato and Aristotle.

In the theories of these Ionic philosophers, the physical ideas of generation, transmutation, local motion, are found in the foreground: generation in the Kosmos to replace generation by the God. Pythagoras and Empedokles blend with their speculations a good deal both of ethics and theology, which we shall find yet more preponderant when we come to the cosmical theories of Plato. He brings us back to the mythical Prometheus, armed with the geometrical and arithmetical combinations of the Pythagoreans: he assumes a chaotic substratum, modified by the intentional and deliberate construction of the Demiurgus and his divine sons, who are described as building up and mixing like a human artisan or chemist. In the theory of Aristotle we find Nature half personified, and assumed to be perpetually at work under the influence of an appetite for good or regularity, which determines her to aim instinctively and without deliberation (like bees or spiders) at constant ends, though these regular tendencies are always accompanied, and often thwarted, by accessories, irregular, undefinable, unpredictable. Both Plato and Aristotle, in their dialectical age, carried abstraction farther than it had been carried by the Ionic philosophers.3 Aristotle imputes to the 88Ionic philosophers that they neglected three out of his four causes (the efficient, formal, and final), and that they attended only to the material. This was a height of abstraction first attained by Plato and himself; in a way sometimes useful, sometimes misleading. The earlier philosophers had not learnt to divide substance from its powers or properties; nor to conceive substance without power as one thing, and power without substance as another. Their primordial substance, with its powers and properties, implicated together as one concrete and without any abstraction, was at once an efficient, a formal, and a material cause: a final cause they did not suppose themselves to want, inasmuch as they always conceived a fixed terminus towards which the agency was directed, though they did not conceive such fixed tendency under the symbol of an appetite and its end. Water, Air, Fire, were in their view not simply inert and receptive patients, impotent until they were stimulated by the active force residing in the ever revolving celestial spheres — but positive agents themselves, productive of important effects. So also a geologist of the present day, when he speculates upon the early condition4 of the Kosmos, reasons upon gaseous, fluid, solid, 89varieties of matter, as manifesting those same laws and properties which experience attests, but manifesting them under different combinations and circumstances. The defect of the Ionic philosophers, unavoidable at the time, was, that possessing nothing beyond a superficial experience, they either ascribed to these physical agents powers and properties not real, or exaggerated prodigiously such as were real; so that the primordial substance chosen, though bearing a familiar name, became little better than a fiction. The Pythagoreans did the same in regard to numbers, ascribing to them properties altogether fanciful and imaginary.

Parmenides and Pythagoras — more nearly akin to Plato and Aristotle.

Parmenides and Pythagoras, taking views of the Kosmos metaphysical and geometrical rather than physical, supplied the basis upon which Plato’s speculations were built. Aristotle recognises Empedokles and Anaxagoras as having approached to his own doctrine — force abstracted or considered apart from substance, yet not absolutely detached from it. This is true about Empedokles to a certain extent, since his theory admits Love and Enmity as agents, the four elements as patients: but it is hardly true about Anaxagoras, in whose theory Noûs imparts nothing more than a momentary shock, exercising what modern chemists 90call a catalytic agency in originating movement among a stationary and stagnant mass of Homœomeries, which, as soon as they are liberated from imprisonment, follow inherent tendencies of their own, not receiving any farther impulse or direction from Noûs.

Advantage derived from this variety of constructive imagination among the Greeks.

In the number of cosmical theories proposed, from Thales to Demokritus, as well as in the diversity and even discordance of the principles on which they were founded — we note not merely the growth and development of scientific curiosity, but also the spontaneity and exuberance of constructive imagination.5 This last is a prominent attribute of the Hellenic mind, displayed to the greatest advantage in their poetical, oratorical, historical, artistic, productions, and transferred from thence to minister to their scientific curiosity. None of their known contemporaries showed the like aptitudes, not even the Babylonians and Egyptians, who were diligent in the observation of the heavens. Now the constructive imagination is not less indispensable to the formation of scientific theories than to the compositions of art, although in the two departments it is subject to different conditions, and appeals to different canons and tests in the human mind. Each of these early Hellenic theories, though all were hypotheses and “anticipations of nature,” yet as connecting together various facts upon intelligible principles, was a step in advance; while the very number and discordance of them (urged by Sokrates6 as an argument for discrediting the purpose common to all), was on the whole advantageous. It lessened the mischief arising from the imperfections of each, increased the chance of exposing such imperfections, and prevented the consecration of any one among them (with that inveterate and peremptory orthodoxy which Plato so much admires7 in the Egyptians) as an infallible dogma and an exclusive mode of 91looking at facts. All the theorists laboured under the common defect of a scanty and inaccurate experience: all of them were prompted by a vague but powerful emotion of curiosity to connect together the past and present of Nature by some threads intelligible and satisfactory to their own minds; each of them followed out some analogy of his own, such as seemed to carry with it a self-justifying plausibility; and each could find some phenomena which countenanced his own peculiar view. As far as we can judge, Leukippus and Demokritus greatly surpassed the others, partly in the pains which they took to elaborate their theory, partly in the number of facts which they brought into consistency with it. The loss of the voluminous writings of Demokritus is deeply to be regretted.8

All these theories were found in circulation by Sokrates, Zeno, Plato, and the dialecticians. Importance of the scrutiny of negative Dialectic.

In studying the writings of Plato and Aristotle, we must recollect that they found all these theories pre-existent or contemporaneous. We are not to imagine that they were the first who turned an enquiring eye on Nature. So far is this from being the case that Aristotle is, as it were, oppressed both by the multitude and by the discordance of his predecessors, whom he cites, with a sort of indulgent consciousness of superiority, as “the ancients” (οἱ ἀρχαῖοι).9 The dialectic activity, inaugurated by Sokrates and Zeno, lowered the estimation of these cosmical theories in more ways than one: first, by the new topics of man and society, which Sokrates put in the foreground for discussion, and treated as the only topics worthy of discussion: next, by the great acuteness which each of them displayed in the employment of the negative weapons, and in bringing to view the weak part of an opponent’s case. When we look at the number of these early theories, and the great need which all of them had to be sifted and scrutinised, we shall recognise the value of negative procedure under such circumstances, whether the negationist had or had not any better affirmative theory of his own. Sokrates, 92moreover, not only turned the subject-matter of discussion from physics to ethics, but also brought into conscious review the method of philosophising: which was afterwards still farther considered and illustrated by Plato. General and abstract terms and their meaning, stood out as the capital problems of philosophical research, and as the governing agents of the human mind during the process: in Plato and Aristotle, and the Dialectics of their age, we find the meaning or concept corresponding to these terms invested with an objective character, and represented as a cause or beginning; by which, or out of which, real concrete things were produced. Logical, metaphysical, ethical, entities, whose existence consists in being named and reasoned about, are presented to us (by Plato) as the real antecedents and producers of the sensible Kosmos and its contents, or (by Aristotle) as coeternal with the Kosmos, but as its underlying constituents — the ἀρχαὶ, primordia or ultimata — into which it was the purpose and duty of the philosopher to resolve sensible things. The men of words and debate, the dialecticians or metaphysical speculators of the period since Zeno and Sokrates, who took little notice of the facts of Nature, stand contrasted in the language of Aristotle with the antecedent physical philosophers who meddled less with debate and more with facts. The contrast is taken in his mind between Plato and Demokritus.10

The early theorists were studied along with Plato and Aristotle, in the third and second centuries B.C.

Both by Stoics and by Epikureans, during the third and second centuries B.C., Demokritus, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, and Herakleitus were studied along with Plato and Aristotle — by some, even more. Lucretius mentions and criticises all the four, though he never names Plato or Aristotle. Cicero greatly admires the style of Demokritus, whose works were arranged in tetralogies by Thrasyllus, as those of Plato were.11

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Negative attribute common to all the early theorists — little or no dialectic.

In considering the early theorists above enumerated, there is great difficulty in finding any positive characteristic applicable to all of them. But a negative characteristic may be found, and has already been indicated by Aristotle. “The earlier philosophers (says he) had no part in dialectics: Dialectical force did not yet exist.”12 And the period upon which we are now entering is distinguished mainly by the introduction and increasing preponderance of this new element — Dialectic — first made conspicuously manifest in the Eleatic Zeno and Sokrates; two memorable persons, very different from each other, but having this property in common.

Zeno of Elea — Melissus.

It is Zeno who stands announced, on the authority of Aristotle, as the inventor of dialectic: that is, as the first person of whose skill in the art of cross-examination and refutation conspicuous illustrative specimens were preserved. He was among the first who composed written dialogues on controversial matters of philosophy.13 Both he, and his contemporary the Samian Melissus, took up the defence of the Parmenidean doctrine. It is remarkable that both one and the other were eminent as political men in their native cities. Zeno is even said to have perished miserably, in generous but fruitless attempts to preserve Elea from being enslaved by the despot Nearchus.

Zeno’s Dialectic — he refuted the opponents of Parmenides, by showing that their assumptions led to contradictions and absurdities.

We know the reasonings of Zeno and Melissus only through scanty fragments, and those fragments transmitted by opponents. But it is plain that both of them, especially Zeno, pressed their adversaries with grave difficulties, which it was more easy to deride than to elucidate. Both took their departure from the ground occupied by Parmenides. They agreed with him in recognising the phenomenal, apparent, or relative world, the world of sense and experience, as a subject of knowledge, though of uncertain and imperfect knowledge. 94Each of them gave, as Parmenides had done, certain affirmative opinions, or at least probable conjectures, for the purpose of explaining it.14 But beyond this world of appearances, there lay the real, absolute, ontological, ultra-phenomenal, or Noumenal world, which Parmenides represented as Ens unum continuum, and which his opponents contended to be plural and discontinuous. These opponents deduced absurd and ridiculous consequences from the theory of the One. Herein both Zeno and Melissus defended Parmenides. Zeno, the better dialectician of the two, retorted upon the advocates of absolute plurality and discontinuousness, showing that their doctrine led to consequences not less absurd and contradictory than the Ens unum of Parmenides. He advanced many distinct arguments; some of them antinomies, deducing from the same premisses both the affirmative and the negative of the same conclusion.15

Consequences of their assumption of Entia Plura Discontinua. Reductiones ad absurdum.

If things in themselves were many (he said) they must be both infinitely small and infinitely great. Infinitely small, because the many things must consist in a number of units, each essentially indivisible: but that which is indivisible has no magnitude, or is infinitely small if indeed it can be said to have any existence whatever:16 Infinitely great, because each of the many things, if assumed to exist, must have 95magnitude. Having magnitude, each thing has parts which also have magnitude: these parts are, by the hypothesis, essentially discontinuous, but this implies that they are kept apart from each other by other intervening parts — and these intervening parts must be again kept apart by others. Each body will thus contain in itself an infinite number of parts, each having magnitude. In other words, it will be infinitely great.17

Again — If things in themselves were many, they would be both finite and infinite in number. Finite, because they are as many as they are, neither more nor less: and every number is a finite number. Infinite, because being essentially separate, discontinuous, units, each must be kept apart from the rest by an intervening unit; and this again by something else intervening. Suppose a multitude A, B, C, D, &c. A and B would be continuous unless they were kept apart by some intervening unit Z. But A and Z would then be continuous unless they were kept apart by something else — Y: and so on ad infinitum: otherwise the essential discontinuousness could not be maintained.18

By these two arguments,19 drawn from the hypothesis which affirmed perpetual divisibility and denied any Continuum, Zeno showed that such Entia multa discontinua would have contradictory attributes: they would be both infinitely great and infinitely small — they would be both finite and infinite in number. This he advanced as a reductio ad absurdum against the hypothesis.

Each thing must exist in its own place — Grain of millet not sonorous.

Again — If existing things be many and discontinuous, each of these must exist in a place of its own. Nothing can exist except in some place. But the place is itself an existing something: each place must therefore have a place of its own to exist in: the second place must have a third place to exist in and so forth ad infinitum.20 We have here a farther reductio ad impossibile of the 96original hypothesis: for that hypothesis denies the continuity of space, and represents space as a multitude of discontinuous portions or places.

Another argument of Zeno is to the following effect:—“Does a grain of millet, when dropped upon the floor, make sound? No. — Does a bushel of millet make sound under the same circumstances? Yes. — Is there not a determinate proportion between the bushel and the grain? There is. — There must therefore be the same proportion between the sonorousness of the two. If one grain be not sonorous, neither can ten thousand grains be so.”21

To appreciate the contradiction brought out by Zeno, we must recollect that he is not here reasoning about facts of sense, phenomenal and relative — but about things in themselves, absolute and ultra-phenomenal realities. He did not deny the fact of sense: to appeal to that fact in reply, would have been to concede his point. The adversaries against whom he reasoned (Protagoras is mentioned, but he can hardly have been among them, if we have regard to his memorable dogma, of which more will be said presently) were those who maintained the plurality of absolute substances, each for itself, with absolute attributes, apart from the fact of sense, and independent of any sentient subject. One grain of millet (Zeno argues) has no absolute sonorousness, neither can ten thousand such grains taken together have any. Upon the hypothesis of absolute reality as a discontinuous multitude, you are here driven to a contradiction which Zeno intends as an argument against the hypothesis. There is no absolute sonorousness in the ten thousand grains: the sound which they make is a phenomenal fact, relative to us as sentients of sound, and having no reality except in correlation with a hearer.22

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Zenonian arguments in regard to motion.

Other memorable arguments of Zeno against the same hypothesis were those by which he proved that if it were admitted, motion would be impossible. Upon the theory of absolute plurality and discontinuousness, every line or portion of distance was divisible into an infinite number of parts: before a moving body could get from the beginning to the end of this line, it must pass in succession over every one of these parts: but to do this in a finite time was impossible: therefore motion was impossible.23

A second argument of the same tendency was advanced in the form of comparison between Achilles and the tortoise — the swiftest and slowest movers. The two run a race, a certain start being given to the tortoise. Zeno contends that Achilles can never overtake the tortoise. It is plain indeed, according to the preceding argument, that motion both for the one and for the other is an impossibility. Neither one nor the other can advance from the beginning to the end of any line, except by passing successively through all the parts of that line: but those parts are infinite in number, and cannot therefore be passed through in any finite time. But suppose such impossibility to be got over: still Achilles will not overtake the tortoise. For while Achilles advances one hundred yards, the tortoise has advanced ten: while Achilles passes over these additional ten yards, the tortoise will have passed over one more yard: while Achilles is passing over this remaining one yard, the tortoise will have got over one-tenth of another yard: and so on ad infinitum: the tortoise will always be in advance of him by a certain distance, which, though ever diminishing, will never vanish into nothing.

The third Zenonian argument derived its name from the flight of an arrow shot from a bow. The arrow while thus carried forward (says Zeno) is nevertheless at rest.24 For the time from 98the beginning to the end of its course consists of a multitude of successive instants. During each of these instants the arrow is in a given place of equal dimension with itself. But that which is during any instant in a given place, is at rest. Accordingly during each successive instant of its flight, the arrow is at rest. Throughout its whole flight it is both in motion and at rest. This argument is a deduction from the doctrine of discontinuous time, as the preceding is a deduction from that of discontinuous space.

A fourth argument25 was derived from the case of two equal bodies moved with equal velocity in opposite directions, and passing each other. If the body A B were at rest, the other body C D would move along the whole length of C D in two minutes. But if C D be itself moving with equal velocity in the opposite direction, A B will pass along the whole length of C D in half that time, or one minute. Hence Zeno infers that the motion of A B is nothing absolute, or belonging to the thing in itself — for if that were so, it would not be varied according to the movement of C D. It is no more than a phenomenal fact, relative to us and our comparison.

This argument, so far as I can understand its bearing, is not deduced (as those preceding are) from the premisses of opponents: but rests upon premisses of its own, and is intended to prove that motion is only relative.

General result and purpose of the Zenonian Dialectic. Nothing is knowable except the relative.

These Zenonian reasonings are memorable as the earliest known manifestations of Grecian dialectic, and are probably equal in acuteness and ingenuity to anything which it ever produced. Their bearing is not always accurately conceived. Most of them are argumenta ad hominem: consequences contradictory and inadmissible, but shown to follow legitimately from a given hypothesis, and therefore serving to disprove the hypothesis itself.26 The hypothesis was one relating 99to the real, absolute, or ultra-phenomenal, which Parmenides maintained to be Ens Unum Continuum, while his opponents affirmed it to be essentially multiple and discontinuous. Upon the hypothesis of Parmenides, the Real and Absolute, being a continuous One, was obviously inconsistent with the movement and variety of the phenomenal world: Parmenides himself recognised the contradiction of the two, and his opponents made it a ground for deriding his doctrine.27 The counter-hypothesis, of the discontinuous many, appeared at first sight not to be open to the same objection: it seemed to be more in harmony with the facts of the phenomenal and relative world, and to afford an absolute basis for them to rest upon. Against this delusive appearance the dialectic of Zeno was directed. He retorted upon the opponents, and showed that if the hypothesis of the Unum Continuum led to absurd consequences, that of the discontinuous many was pregnant with deductions yet more absurd and contradictory. He exhibits in detail several of these contradictory deductions, with a view to refute the hypothesis from whence they flow; and to prove that, far from performing what it promises, it is worse than useless, as entangling us in contradictory conclusions. The result of his reasoning, implied rather than announced, is — That neither of the two hypotheses are of any avail to supply a real and absolute basis for the phenomenal and relative world: That the latter must rest upon its own evidence, and must be interpreted, in so far as it can be interpreted at all, by its own analogies.

Mistake of supposing Zeno’s reductiones ad absurdum of an opponents doctrines to be generalisations of data gathered from experience.

But the purport of Zeno’s reasoning is mistaken, when he is 100conceived as one who wishes to delude his hearers by proving both sides of a contradictory proposition. Zeno’s contradictory conclusions are elicited with the express purpose of disproving the premisses from which they are derived. For these premisses Zeno himself is not to be held responsible, since he borrows them from his opponents: a circumstance which Aristotle forgets, when he censures the Zenonian arguments as paralogisms, because they assume the Continua, Space, and Time, to be discontinuous or divided into many distinct parts.28 Now this absolute discontinuousness of matter, space, and time, was not advanced by Zeno as a doctrine of his own, but is the very doctrine of his opponents, taken up by him for the purpose of showing that it led to contradictory consequences, and thus of indirectly refuting it. The sentence of Aristotle is thus really in Zeno’s favour, though apparently adverse to him. In respect to motion, a similar result followed from the Zenonian reasonings; namely, to show That motion, as an attribute of the Real and Absolute, was no less inconsistent with the hypothesis of those who opposed Parmenides, than with the hypothesis of Parmenides himself:—That absolute motion could no more be reconciled with the doctrine of the discontinuous Many, than with that of the Continuous One:—That motion therefore was only a phenomenal fact, relative to our sensations, conceptions, and comparisons; and having no application to the absolute. In this phenomenal point of view, neither Zeno nor Parmenides nor Melissus disputed the fact of motion. They recognised it as a portion of the world of sensation and experience; which world they tried to explain, well or ill, by analogies and conjectures derived from itself.

Zenonian Dialectic — Platonic Parmenides.

Though we have not the advantage of seeing the Zenonian dialectics as they were put forth by their author, yet if we compare the substance of them as handed down to us, with those dialectics which form the latter half of the Platonic dialogue called Parmenides, 101we shall find them not inferior in ingenuity, and certainly more intelligible in their purpose. Zeno furnishes no positive support to the Parmenidean doctrine, but he makes out a good negative case against the counter-doctrine.

Views of historians of philosophy respecting Zeno.

Zeller and other able modern critics, while admitting the reasoning of Zeno to be good against this counter-doctrine, complain that he takes it up too exclusively; that One and Many did not exclude each other, and that the doctrines of Parmenides and his opponents were both true together, but neither of them true to the exclusion of the other. But when we reflect that the subject of predication on both sides was the Real (Ens per se) it was not likely that either Parmenides or his opponents would affirm it to be both absolutely One and Continuous, and absolutely Many and Discontinuous.29 If the opponents of Parmenides had taken this ground, Zeno need not have imagined deductions for the purpose of showing that their hypothesis led to contradictory conclusions; for the contradictions would have stood avowedly registered in the hypothesis itself. If a man affirms both at once, he divests the predication of its absolute character, as belonging unconditionally to Ens per se; and he restricts it to the phenomenal, the relative, the conditioned — dependent upon our sensations and our fluctuating point of view. This was not intended either by Parmenides or by his opponents.

Absolute and relative — the first unknowable.

If, indeed, we judge the question, not from their standing-point, but from our own, we shall solve the difficulty by adopting the last-mentioned answer. We shall admit that One and Many are predicates which do not necessarily exclude each other; but we shall refrain from affirming or denying either of them respecting the Real, the Absolute, the Unconditioned. Of an object absolutely one and continuous — or of objects absolutely many and discontinuous, apart from the facts of our own sense and consciousness,102 and independent of any sentient subject — we neither know nor can affirm anything. Both these predicates (One — Many) are relative and phenomenal, grounded on the facts and comparisons of our own senses and consciousness, and serving only to describe, to record, and to classify, those facts. Discrete quantity or number, or succession of distinct unities — continuous quantity, or motion and extension — are two conceptions derived from comparison, abstracted and generalised from separate particular phenomena of our consciousness; the continuous, from our movements and the consciousness of persistent energy involved therein — the discontinuous, from our movements, intermitted and renewed, as well as from our impressions of sense. We compare one discrete quantity with another, or one continual quantity with another, and we thus ascertain many important truths: but we select our unit, or our standard of motion and extension, as we please, or according to convenience, subject only to the necessity of adapting our ulterior calculations consistently to this unit, when once selected. The same object may thus be considered sometimes as one, sometimes as many; both being relative, and depending upon our point of view. Motion, Space, Time, may be considered either as continuous or as discontinuous: we may reason upon them either as one or the other, but we must not confound the two points of view with each other. When, however, we are called upon to travel out of the Relative, and to decide between Parmenides and his opponents — whether the Absolute be One or Multitudinous — we have only to abstain from affirming either, or (in other words) to confess our ignorance. We know nothing of an absolute, continuous, self-existent One, or of an absolute, discontinuous Many.

Zeno did not deny motion as a fact, phenomenal and relative.

Some critics understand Zeno to have denied motion as a fact — opposing sophistical reasoning to certain and familiar experience. Upon this view is founded the well-known anecdote, that Diogenes the Cynic refuted the argument by getting up and walking. But I do not so construe the scope of his argument. He did not deny motion as a fact. It rested with him on the evidence of sense, acknowledged by every one. It was therefore only a phenomenal fact relative to our consciousness, sensation, 103movements, and comparisons. As such, but as such only, did Zeno acknowledge it. What he denied was, motion as a fact belonging to the Absolute, or as deducible from the Absolute. He did not deny the Absolute or Thing in itself, as an existing object, but he struck out variety, divisibility, and motion, from the list of its predicates. He admitted only the Parmenidean Ens, one, continuous, unchanged, and immovable, with none but negative predicates, and severed from the relative world of experience and sensation.

Gorgias the Leontine — did not admit the Absolute, even as conceived by Parmenides.

Other reasoners, contemporary with Zeno, did not agree with him, in admitting the Absolute, even as an object with no predicates, except unity and continuity. They denied it altogether, both as substratum and as predicate. To establish this negation is the purpose of a short treatise ascribed to the rhetor or Sophist Gorgias, a contemporary of Zeno; but we are informed that all the reasonings, which Gorgias employed, were advanced, or had already been advanced, by others before him.30 Those reasonings are so imperfectly preserved, that we can make out little more than the general scope.

His reasonings against the Absolute, either as Ens or Entia.

Ens, or Entity per se (he contended), did not really exist. Even granting that it existed, it was unknowable by any one. And even granting that it both existed, and was known by any one, still such person could not communicate his knowledge of it to others.31

As to the first point, Ens was no more real or existent than Non-Ens: the word Non-Ens must have an objective meaning, as well as the word Ens: it was Non-Ens, therefore it was, or existed. Both of them existed alike, or rather neither of them existed. Moreover, if Ens existed, it must exist either as One or as Many — either as eternal or as generated — either in itself, or 104in some other place. But Melissus, Zeno, and other previous philosophers, had shown sufficient cause against each of these alternatives separately taken. Each of the alternative essential predicates had been separately disproved; therefore the subject, Ens, could not exist under either of them, or could not exist at all.

Ens, incogitable and unknowable.

As to the second point, let us grant that Ens or Entia exist; they would nevertheless (argued Gorgias) be incogitable and unknowable. To be cogitated is no more an attribute of Ens than of Non-Ens. The fact of cogitation does not require Ens as a condition, or attest Ens as an absolute or thing in itself. If our cogitation required or attained Ens as an indispensable object, then there could be no fictitious cogitata nor any false propositions. We think of a man flying in the air, or of a chariot race on the surface of the sea. If our cogitata were realities, these must be so as well as the rest: if realities alone were the object of cogitation, then these could not be thought of. As Non-Ens was thus undeniably the object of cogitation, so Ens could not be its object: for what was true respecting one of these contraries, could not be true respecting the other.

Ens, even if granted to be knowable, is still incommunicable to others.

As to the third point: Assuming Ens both to exist and to be known by you, you cannot (said Gorgias) declare or explain it to any one else. You profess to have learnt what Ens is in itself, by your sight or other perceptions but you declare to others by means of words, and these words are neither themselves the absolute Ens, nor do they bring Ens before the hearer. Even though you yourself know Ens, you cannot, by your words, enable him to know it. If he is to know Ens, he must know it in the same way as you. Moreover, neither your words, nor Ens itself, will convey to the hearer the same knowledge as to you; for the same cannot be at once in two distinct subjects; and even if it were, yet since you and the hearer are not completely alike, so the effect of the same object on both of you will not appear to be like.32

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Such is the reasoning, as far as we can make it out, whereby Gorgias sought to prove that the absolute Ens was neither existent, nor knowable, nor communicable by words from one person to another.

Zeno and Gorgias — contrasted with the earlier Grecian philosophers.

The arguments both of Zeno and of Gorgias (the latter presenting the thoughts of others earlier than himself), dating from a time coinciding with the younger half of the life of Sokrates, evince a new spirit and purpose in Grecian philosophy, as compared with the Ionians, the two first Eleates, and the Pythagoreans. Zeno and Gorgias exhibit conspicuously the new element of dialectic: the force of the negative arm in Grecian philosophy, brought out into the arena, against those who dogmatized or propounded positive theories: the fertility of Grecian imagination in suggesting doubts and difficulties, for which the dogmatists, if they aspired to success and reputation, had to provide answers. Zeno directed his attack against one scheme of philosophy — the doctrine of the Absolute Many: leaving by implication the rival doctrine — the Absolute One of Parmenides in exclusive possession of the field, yet not reinforcing it with any new defences against objectors. Gorgias impugned the philosophy of the Absolute in either or both of its forms — as One or as Many: not with a view of leaving any third form as the only survivor, or of providing any substitute from his own invention, but of showing that Ens, the object of philosophical research, could neither be found nor known. The negative purpose, disallowing altogether the philosophy of Nature (as then conceived, not as now conceived), was declared without reserve by Gorgias, as we shall presently find that it was by Sokrates also.

New character of Grecian philosophy — antithesis of affirmative and negative — proof and disproof.

It is the opening of the negative vein which imparts from this time forward a new character to Grecian philosophy. The positive and negative forces, emanating from different aptitudes in the human mind, are now both of them actively developed, and in strenuous antithesis 106to each other. Philosophy is no longer exclusively confined to dogmatists, each searching in his imagination for the Absolute Ens of Nature, and each propounding what seems to him the only solution of the problem. Such thinkers still continue their vocation, but under new conditions of success, and subject to the scrutiny of numerous dissentient critics. It is no longer sufficient to propound a theory,33 either in obscure, oracular metaphors and half-intelligible aphorisms, like Herakleitus — or in verse more or less impressive, like Parmenides or Empedokles. The theory must be sustained by proofs, guarded against objections, defended against imputations of inconsistency: moreover, it must be put in comparison with other rival theories, the defects of which must accordingly be shown up along with it. Here are new exigencies, to which dogmatic philosophers had not before been obnoxious. They were now required to be masters of the art of dialectic attack and defence, not fearing the combat of question and answer — a combat in which, assuming tolerable equality between the duellists, the questioner had the advantage of the sun, or the preferable position,34 and the farther advantage of choosing where to aim his blows. To expose fallacy or inconsistency, was found to be both an easier process, and a more appreciable display of ingenuity, than the discovery and establishment of truth in such manner as to command assent. The weapon of negation, refutation, cross-examination, was wielded for its own results, and was found hard to parry by the affirmative philosophers of the day.

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APPENDIX.

To illustrate by comparison the form of Grecian philosophy, before Dialectic was brought to bear upon it, I transcribe from two eminent French scholars (M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire and Professor Robert Mohl) some account of the mode in which the Indian philosophy has always been kept on record and communicated.

M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire (in his Premier Mémoire sur le Sânkhya, pp. 5-11) gives the following observations upon the Sânkhya or philosophy of Kapila, one of the principal systems of Sanskrit philosophy: date (as supposed) about 700 B.C.

There are two sources from whence the Sânkhya philosophy is known:—

“1. Les Soûtras ou aphorismes de Kapila.

“2. Le traité déjà connu et traduit sous le nom de Sânkhya Kârikâ, c’est à dire Vers Mémoriaux du Sânkhya.

“Les Soûtras de Kapila sont en tout au nombre de 499, divisés en six lectures, et répartis inégalement entre chacune d’elles. Les Soûtras sont accompagnés d’un commentaire qui les explique, et qui est d’un brahmane nommé le Mendiant. Le commentateur explique avec des developpements plus ou moins longs les Soûtras de Kapila, qu’il cite un à un.

“Les Soûtras sont en général tres concis: parfois ils ne se composent que de deux ou trois mots, et jamais ils ne comprennent plus d’une phrase. Cette forme aphoristique, sous laquelle se présente à nous la philosophie Indienne — est celle qu’a prise la science Indienne dans toutes ses branches, depuis la grammaire jusqu’à la philosophie. Les Soûtras de Panini, qui a réduit toutes les régles de la grammaire sanscrite en 3996 aphorismes, ne sont pas moins concis que ceux de Kapila. Ce mode étrange d’exposition tient dans l’Inde à la manière même dont la science s’est transmise d’âge en âge. Un maître n’a généralement qu’un disciple: il lui suffit, pour la doctrine qu’il communique, d’avoir des points de repère, et le commentaire oral qu’il ajoute108 à ces sentences pour leur expliquer, met le disciple en état de les bien comprendre. Le disciple lui-même, une fois qu’il en a pénétré le sens veritable, n’a pas besoin d’un symbole plus développé, et la concision même des aphorismes l’aide a les mieux retenir. C’est une initiation qu’il a reçue: et les sentences, dans lesquelles cette initiation se résume, restent toujours assez claires pour lui.

“Mais il n’en est pas de même pour les lecteurs étrangers, et il serait difficile de trouver rien de plus obscur que ces Soûtras. Les commentaires mêmes ne suffisent pas toujours à les rendre parfaitement intelligibles.

“Le seul exemple d’une forme analogue dans l’histoire de l’esprit humain et de la science en Occident, nous est fourni par les Aphorismes d’Hippocrate: eux aussi s’adressaient à des adeptes, et ils réclamaient, comme les Soûtras Indiens, l’explication des maîtres pour être bien compris par les disciples. Mais cet exemple unique n’a point tiré à conséquence dans le monde occidental, tandis que dans le monde Indien l’aphorisme est resté pendant de longs siècles la forme spéciale de la science: et les développements de pensée qui nous sont habituels, et qui nous semblent indispensables, ont été reservés aux commentaires.

“La Sânkhya Kârikâ est en vers: En Grèce, la poésie a été pendant quelque temps la langue de la philosophie; Empédocle, Parménide, ont écrit leurs systèmes en vers. Ce n’est pas Kapila qui l’a écrite. Entre Kapila, et l’auteur de la Kârikâ, Isvara Krishna, on doit compter quelques centaines d’années tout au moins: et le second n’a fait que rediger en vers, pour aider la mémoire des élèves, la doctrine que le maître avait laissée sous la forme axiomatique.

“On conçoit, du reste, sans peine, que l’usage des vers mémoriaux se soit introduit dans l’Inde pour l’enseignement et la transmission de la science: c’était une conséquence nécessaire de l’usage des aphorismes. Les sciences les plus abstraites (mathematics, astronomy, algebra), emploient aussi ce procédé, quoiqu’il semble peu fait pour leur austérité et leur precision. Ainsi, le rhythme est, avec les aphorismes, et par le même motif, la forme à peu pres générale de la science dans l’Inde.”

(Kapila as a personage is almost legendary; nothing exact is known about him. His doctrine passes among the Indians “comme une sorte de révélation divine”. — Pp. 252, 253.)

M. Mohl observes as follows:—

“Ceci m’amène aux Pouranas. Nous n’avons plus rien du Pourana primitif, qui paraît avoir été une cosmogonie, suivie d’une histoire des Dieux et des families héroïques. Les sectes ont fini par s’approprier 109ce cadre, après des transformations dont nous ne savons ni le nombre ni les époques: et s’en sont servies, pour exalter chacune son dieu, et y fondre, avec des débris de l’ancienne tradition, leur mythologie plus moderne. Ce que les Pouranas sont pour le peuple, les six systèmes de philosophie le sont pour les savants. Nous trouvons ces systèmes dans la forme abstruse que les Hindous aiment à donner à leur science: chaque école a ses aphorismes, qui, sous forme de vers mnémoniques, contiennent dans le moins grand nombre de mots possible tous les résultats d’une école. Mais nous n’avons aucun renseignement sur les commencements de l’école, sur les discussions que l’élaboration du système a dû provoquer, sur les hommes qui y ont pris part, sur la marche et le développement des idées: nous avons le système dans sa dernière forme, et rien ne nous permet de remplir l’espace qui le sépare des théories plus vagues que l’on trouve dans les derniers écrits de l’époque védique, à laquelle pourtant tout prétend se rattacher. À partir de ces aphorismes, nous avons des commentaires et des traités d’exposition et d’interprétation: mais les idées premières, les termes techniques, et le systeme en tier, sont fixés antérieurement. Tous ces systèmes reposent sur une analyse psychologique très raffinée; et chacun a sa terminologie précise, et à laquelle la nôtre ne répond que fort imparfaitement: il faut donc, sous peine de se tromper et de tromper ses lecteurs, que les traducteurs créent une foule de termes techniques, ce qui n’est pas la moindre difficulté de ce travail.” R. Mohl, ‘Rapport Annuel Fait à la Société Asïatique,’ 1863, pp. 103-105; collected edition, ‘Vingt-sept ans d’histoire des Études Orientales,’ vol. ii. pp. 496, 498-9.

When the purpose simply is to imprint affirmations on the memory, and to associate them with strong emotions of reverential belief — mnemonic verses and aphorisms are suitable enough; Empedokles employed verse, Herakleitus and the Pythagoreans expressed themselves in aphorisms — brief, half-intelligible, impressive symbols. But if philosophy is ever to be brought out of such twilight into the condition of “reasoned truth,” this cannot be done without submitting all the affirmations to cross-examining opponents — to the scrutiny of a negative Dialectic. It is the theory and application of this Dialectic which we are about to follow in Sokrates and Plato.

[END OF CHAPTER II]

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