PROP. VI.————
to, and which principally influenced the philosophy of succeeding times. Yet what could be made of a doctrine which asserted that all existence was both particular and universal, in the face of an unbounded creation, apparently teeming with merely particular existences? That position seemed to be checkmated at once, both by the senses and the reason of mankind. Could Plato have maintained a thesis so indefensible? That was scarcely credible: and altogether the perplexity was so great that philosophers were driven to accept the other alternative, as the simpler and more intelligible interpretation of the two, and to construe the Platonic analysis of Knowing and Being as a division of these into kinds, and not into elements. They supposed Plato to maintain that every cognition and every existence is either particular or universal; and thus they ascribed to him the very doctrine which he virtually denied, and took from him the very doctrine which he virtually affirmed.
Explanation of this charge.19. This charge requires some explanation. When it is said that philosophers generally have misapprehended the Platonic analysis, this does not mean that they expressly adopted the wrong interpretation, and expressly disavowed the right one. They were not thus explicit in their error: they did not perceive the wideness of the distinction between kinds and elements, and, therefore, all that is meant is that they manifested a marked bias in favour of the wrong