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ON THE INTERPKETATION OF PLATO'S PARMENIDES. 21 we must, assert its " participation " in a great variety of attributes and predicates. While, if the subject of our negative judgment cannot be denned as the One nor yet as anything else which is a that with its own special " that- ness " (el jjLevroi fArjre TO ei> /LLIJTC eiCfstvo ,u?} ecrrat 161 A), we can make of course no significant statement at all about it, and are reduced to speechlessness (ovSe (frOeyyeaBai, Bel ovSev). We may now attempt to enumerate in detail some of the predicates which we have by this argument vindicated for the One. Among the most obvious are likeness and unlikeness. For we have already seen that the One, even though it be negatively qualified, is other than the rest of thinkable subjects. And being other it is qualitatively dif- ferent (inference from erepoc elvat to erepolov elva/.), but what is different is of course unlike. Thus the One, even if it be not = the Real, stands in the relation of unlikeness to other things. Yet again, in another relation, the One has like- ness. For it is clear that it cannot remain the permanent subject of discourse and inquiry without being throughout " like " itself, otherwise we should find ourselves discussing not the One but something other than the One. Again, the One is unequal to other things : were it equal to them, it would be and be like them, both of which qualifications we deny of it. It is therefore not equal to anything else and is positively unequal and "partakes" of inequality. But that which is unequal to other things is greater or smaller than they. The non-existent One can therefore be greater and smaller than other things, and " partakes of " greatness and smallness. Therefore, of course, since what is greater than A and less than B must be equal to something inter- mediate between them, the One may also be said to " par- take of " equality, in spite of our former decision to the contrary (161 E). On the course of the argument up to this point there is no need to remark at any length. Its logical and meta- physical interest centres of course in the steps by which we reach the general conclusion that even a negatively deter- mined reality "has many predicates". It was perhaps the greatest service ever rendered to logic by one man that Plato performed when he showed, here and in the Sophistes, that to say "A is not B " does not exclude A from being something else, and in fact that "not to be B " simply means " to be something different from B ". And this service to logic was at the same time an equal service to metaphysics. For so long as " riot-being " is taken to mean utter unreality, not only do the commonest negative judgments of everyday life