Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/51

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PLATO'S PARMENIDES. 35 relations to one another. Thus in the Philebus we have (1) the recognition of the same two questions which Parmenides had raised at the beginning of our dialogue as the chief problems of metaphysics ; (2) a somewhat depreciatory de- scription of the solution which is all our dialogue offers ; (3) and a substitution for it of a solution by a new and more detailed method, which is no other than the 8iaip<ri<; xar e'lBtj so familiar to us from the Sophistes and Politicus. The gist of the whole passage will be that the mere demonstra- tion of the mutual implication of unity and plurality with which the Parmenides ends is only the beginning of philo- sophy ; the real task which has to be faced is that of con- structing a systematic arrangement of ei8r), a specimen of which is given in the Sophistes. Thus the passage of the Philebus, besides affording some testimony to the genuine- ness of the Parmenides, seems to go a long way towards justifying the unwillingness I have more than once expressed to assign the dialogue to the same period of Plato's life with the Sophistes and Politicus. There is one more famous passage in the Philebus, which, taken in connexion with the still more famous passage on the same subject in the Republic, may throw light on the meaning of Plato's ev in the Parmenides. I mean the description of the supreme reality, the " Form of Good ". We learn from Philebus, 65 A, that the " Good " can only be apprehended by us under the threefold forms of (a) beauty, (6) symmetry, (c) truth, while, as every one knows, we are told in the Repbulic (509) that the " Good," though the source not only of knowledge but even of reality to whatever can be known and is real, is itself something higher and greater than knowledge and even than reality. Now, putting on one side all that these passages tell us of the concrete content of the " Good," what can we gather from them as to its logical form ? It is clearly one and indivisible ; at the same time as a unity it is beyond our power of comprehension, and appears to our under- standing in the form of an elaborate system of systems (Philebus'). And just this and nothing else is the specific character of that " One," in which the Parmenidean hypo- theses have led us to believe. It also is by hypothesis most truly one, yet it too only exists for us as manifesting itself in indefinite plurality ; its existence, again, like that of the " Good," is the condition not only of knowledge but even of the existence of everything else. So that I think we shall not be going too far if we describe the " One " of hypotheses 2 and 6 as the Platonic " Idea of Good," seen in its purely logical aspect as the supreme unity of all existence.