Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/489

A STUDY OF PLATONIC TERMINOLOGY. 475 No formal rule can better help us to avoid the danger of erroneous interpretations arising from either of these two causes than that which advises us to determine the meaning of every phrase or abstract proposition by means of the ex- amination of the consequences which are involved in it, or the applications which are made of it, and to regard two phrases or propositions as equivalent, or as two ways of saying the same thing (Peirce), whenever they are employed, by any one who adopts them, as a means of arriving at the same particular conclusions. The application of this criterion to the history of philo- sophy is only apparently inconsistent with the oft-quoted precept of Batteux that " we must never apply to the ancient philosophers the consequences of their premisses or the premisses of their conclusions ". In fact the consequences, referred to in our case, are not the consequences which the historian or the critic believes can be drawn from given affirmations of the philosophers studied by him, but the consequences which the philosophers them- selves have drawn, or have shown that they believed could be drawn, from them. An inquiry which seems to me especially adapted to serve as an example for the application of the general considera- tions expounded above is that which relates to the first phases of the development of that important distinction which is expressed in modern Logic by opposing the con- notation of general terms to their denotation. In those of the Platonic Dialogues in which there appears no technical term to indicate the characteristics common to the different objects designated by the same name, the problem of seeking such common characteristics is usually formulated in one or other of the following ways : I. By the question : What is ? (ri TTOTC ecrri), followed by the word whose signification is to be determined. E.g. Gorgias, 502, E ; Anterasta, 133, B C ; Theages, 122, C ; Alcibiades, minor, 138, D, etc. II. By asking: " Why (Bia ri) or to what end (TT/SO? aXXo TI, reo9 aTTo/SXe-^ai/re?, Protag., 354, C E) do you call the different objects in question by the same name?" In the same sense the preposition Kara is used, e.g., (Protag., 354 D C) Kara ro8e ayada avra Kaelre ; especially in the phrases : KaO' o, KaO" 1 oa-ov. Similar use is made also of the particles : $, Trfj, ravrr), etc., the first being often used as an equivalent of KaO' oa-ov. In the Protagoras Try is used correlatively with Bion.