24 A. E. TAYLOE : a basis for exclusion and every negation must rest on a positive ground, and consequently affirmation and negation always presuppose one another, and are connected, as we may say, 8ea-/j.u> rwi. Or, to translate the result from logic into metaphysics, the reality which we affirm in any positive judgment is always a part only, never the whole, of reality, and has therefore an aspect of unreality, while that which in any significant negative judgment we exclude from reality has nevertheless a reality of its own. Thus we have clearly enunciated the important principle, which even to-day would be taken in some quarters, as it no doubt was at Megara, as a jest or a paradox, that there is no fancy, even in our wildest dreams, so nugatory and illusory as not to find its own humble place in the all-embracing system of truth and reality, nor any conception which we can form, in our moments of highest and truest thinking, of the contents of that system which will not fall short of its fulness. The bearing of such a principle on the relation of the Ideal world or any one Idea of them all to the corresponding sense- reality is obvious. It does away once and for ever with such double-edged applications of the principle of Identity as there is reason to believe the Megarian school were addicted to. So long as the principle of Identity was taken in all its rigidity as a first axiom of thought, it was equally easy for the acute controversialist either, taking his stand on the reality of the Ideas, to condemn the sensible world (Sophistes, 246-9), or, starting with the reality of the sensible world, to reject the ideas as he pleased. 1 We now see that neither proceeding is justifiable. The One whether interpreted to mean the world-system itself or any lesser system of parts, such as the individual Idea is of course real, but it cannot be real unless the Many the sensible world of change and plurality is so also (hyp. 2) : the sensible world actually is, and so far the Ideas are negated, but that is no proof of their unreality (hyp. 6), for what has negative qualifications is, ipso facto, real, and there is no reason why it should not be the highest reality. When once we have grasped this great principle, the following of it out in detail is a matter of very secondary importance. For the sake of completeness, how- ever, and in order to make it perfectly clear to the reader in what sense I understand every paragraph of the dialogue, I will present a brief abstract of the remainder of the hypothesis (162 B-163 B). 1 For a Megarian argument of the latter kind cf. Diog. L., ii., 119. Stilpo eXeyt TOV Aryoi/ra (ivdptairov f-yfiv [Jirjftfva, ovrt yap T<iv8f eyfiv nvre
