through the mazes of this chain of arguments, which result after all in two contradictory conclusions. It is doubtful if Plato had any other object in this "legerdemain of words" than to stimulate the curiosity of a youthful inquirer like Socrates with a series of arguments as puzzling and equivocal as the riddle in his "Republic," to which Mr Grote compares them: "A man and no man, seeing and not seeing, a bird and no bird, sitting upon wood and no wood, struck and did not strike it with a stone and no stone." The only difference is, that in one case the author knew the solution of his riddle; while it may be doubted if Plato himself held the key to the enigmas in his "Parmenides."
In this Dialogue we are introduced also to Zeno—"Parmenides' second self"—the able exponent of the art of Dialectic, and a type of a new stage of Greek thought which had just commenced with the Sophists. The appearance of these professors at Athens was a sign of the times. Hitherto, as we have seen, philosophy had resulted in rough abstractions from Nature or in a vague Idealism; but now thought was directed to the practical requirements of life, and the Sophists supplied a recognised want in the education of the age. They were the professors of universal knowledge; and, above all, they taught Rhetoric—in the view of an Athenian the most important of all branches of learning. To speak with a fluency and dignity was not so much an accomplishment as a necessary safeguard at Athens, where "Informers" abounded, where litigation was incessant, and where a citizen was liable
