Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/150

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ELEATICS—PARMENIDES.
95

as determined by the system of Parmenides. Here we find the fundamental antithesis of which I have spoken carried out by the dialectic movement of thought into its most extreme opposition. This antithesis has come before us as the universal and the particular, the intelligible and the sensible, matter and form, the one and the many, the permanent and the changeable: it now comes before us as Being and not-Being. This is a form into which the antithesis is inevitably forced, forced by a logical necessity. If the one term be Being, the other must be not-Being, otherwise it would be the same term over again, and there would be no antithesis. Whatever the one member of the antithesis be, the other must be its direct opposite; otherwise the antithesis would not be fundamental, it would have its foundation in a higher unity. Run over each pair of terms. Here the particular is obviously the non-universal; if it were the universal there would be no antithesis; there is no antithesis between the universal and the universal. The particular, then, is the non-universal, and we may express the opposition as the universal and the non-universal. In the same way the intelligible and the sensible is equivalent to the intelligible and the non-intelligible; matter and form is equivalent to matter and not-matter; the one and the many is equivalent to the one and the not-one; the permanent and the changeable is equivalent to the permanent and the not-permanent. So likewise, when we make Being one of the terms of the antithesis, it