Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/36

20 A. E. TAYLOE : logical language, " negative judgments need not be with- out significance". And thus regarded the non-existence of the One has already been implied in the conclusions of hypothesis 2. For there we saw that (a) the Many are real, as well as the One, (b) another way of expressing the same truth whatever can be affirmed about reality can also in an appropriate sense be denied of it. So that the discussion on which we are now to enter and its con- tinuation in hypothesis 8 are of vital interest for our in- terpretation of the dialogue. For it is an independent investigation into the results of a presupposition to which we have ahead}' tacitly committed ourselves in rejecting the first for the second interpretation of the world's unity ; and hence it is all-important for us to be convinced that from this negative as well as from that positive aspect of it our conception of that unity is compatible with the possibility of every form of significant predication. That it is so compatible we establish at length in the following way. When we say " the One is uon-existeiit " do we or do we not mean the same thing as when we say " the Not-one is non-existent " ? It is of course clear that we mean entirely different things by the two propositions. Similarly, if one says " smallness " or "greatness" is non- existent he means something quite different from what is said in either of the two former judgments. So that we may say in general that the judgment " the One is not " is a judgment about a subject which is not identical w T ith other subjects, and that this judgment has a meaning. We may lay it down at once then of the non-existent One, as of any other subject of a negative judgment, (a) that it is known and knowable ; for otherwise the judgment would mean nothing, and (6) that it is something different from all other possible subjects of judgments ; for the difference we assert between it and them belongs no less to it than to them. Or still more generally, we may say that like an}' other sub- ject it has quality of its own and can therefore be denoted by the various demonstratives "this," "that," and that it has relation to other things and can thus be qualified by the prepositions which denote such relations, " to," " of," " from" (KOI fjurjv rov ye eiceivov KCLI TOV TWOS KOI TOVTOU quality teal rovro) KOI rovrutv relation /cai iravrwv TWV ToiovTotv /tere^et TO /IT) ov ev, 160 E). Thus, though we still feel ourselves precluded from saying of the non-existent One that it is without further qualification, we may, and if we mean anything definite by the name One