dicates can both be true, if (
Greek characters) reality do not
exclude the reality of (Greek characters).
6 and 8 show that (Greek characters) may have negatives attached to
it and yet predication remain possible. In particular,
6 shows that (Greek characters) can have predicates of a positive
kind, even though it have also negative ones ; 8, that
even if (Greek characters) be thought of as negatively determined,
or be not rightly apprehended, yet so long as its
existence is not absolutely denied, things will have
an apparent unity, and admit of assertions being
made about them, though these assertions will not
rise to the level of real knowledge.
Bringing these various results together, I think we may
venture to say that the object of the second part of the
Parmenides has now been shown to be this : to demonstrate
that the crude Idealism which places reality in a mere
undiversified unity, and the crude Sensationalism which finds
it in mere chaotic diversity, alike end, when thought out, in
speculative Nihilism, and to justify against both, as the true
interpretation of the world, a theory which, while refusing
to regard the multiplicity and change of sense-perception as
the ultimate truth of things, yet looks upon it as a necessary
and indispensable element in the whole. The truth of things
lies in the Ideas, but they are not, as the opposite view
supposed, in a world of their own, nor is the phenomenal
world simply unreal ; it is the sphere in which the Ideas
manifest themselves, and, just as the sensible world would
be nothing but for its "participation" in the Ideas, so the Idea
would be equally nothing but for its permeating presence in
the actual world of experience. In the Parmenides, in fact,
as in the Sophistes, we find Plato defending his own view of
the world against attack from two quarters. He has to
answer (a) the philosophers .who recognise the sensible as
the only reality, and attempt to dispense altogether with the
Ideas. And in the Parmenides the refutation on this side
must be sought in the eighth and ninth hypotheses. In 8,
where we have, as I have shown in the proper place, Plato's
own account of (Greek characters), we see the perplexities to which the
neglect of the Idea (cf. Soph., 246 B, (Greek characters))
and in 9 the ultimate speechlessness to which its consistent
rejection must lead. Plato has also (b) to meet the believers
in the "changeless and moveless" bodiless Idea as the sole
reality, and it is to them that the chief part of the dialogue
(hyp. 1-6) is allotted. And the moral of the whole cannot
