NOTE IN REPLY TO MR. A. E. TAYLOR. IN publishing my article on " The Later Ontology of Plato" (MiND r N.S., No. 41) I was partly actuated by a hope that the views therein expressed might attract the attention of scholars better acquainted than I am with the minutiae of Platonic criticism and thus lead to a reconsideration of the issues involved. They might agree with me or they might not ; but at any rate there was a chance of new light being thrown on what is perhaps the most fascinating problem connected with ancient philosophy. I there- fore welcome with pleasure the reappearance of Mr. A. E. Taylor in a field where he has already displayed his competence, and although my interpretation of the Timceus has not the advantage of his support I shall look forward with interest to the article in which it is his intention to controvert it. Meantime as Mr. Taylor has tried to discredit me in public estimation by citing a number of alleged inaccuracies and over- sights from the article referred to I feel bound to examine the charges seriatim, not taking them in the order of their occurrence, but, for greater convenience, in the historical order of the opinions to which they relate. Beginning then with Parmenides, I am censured for making the "remarkable assertion" that he identified space with pure reason (MiND, N.S., No. 45, On the First Part of Plato's Parmenides, p. 2). Several propositions are involved in the obnoxious sentence, and I cannot tell to which of them Mr. Taylor objects. Am I wrong in translating that operation which Parmenides calls voeiv by " pure reason"? or in assuming that he identified voelv with emu? or that his description of Being exactly fits space ? If I err, I err in good company, for Gomperz represents Parmenides as holding that reality (das Reale) is both extended and thinking. 1 But as the Eleatic master altogether denied plurality and distinction within the sphere of Being this was to identify thought with extension, or space with reason, for in this instance the words may be taken as equivalent ; although if we were talking about Spinoza it would be most dangerous to do so. And Schwegler, Erdmann, and Win- delband seem to be of the same opinion. Mr. Taylor finds me speaking of the unanimous tradition of Greek philosophy that like can only be known by like in a way that shows my forgetfulness of the "rival doctrine of perception by opposites hinted at by Heracleitus and elaborately worked out by Anaxagoras" (ibid.). I presume he is referring to a fragment of 1 Griechische Denker, i., p. 145,
