Sophist
gives him the opportunity of making the most damaging reflections on
the Sophist and all his kith and kin, and to exhibit him in the most
discreditable light.
Nor need we seriously consider whether Plato was right in assuming that
an animal so various could not be confined within the limits of a
single definition. In the infancy of logic, men sought only to obtain
a definition of an unknown or uncertain term; the after reflection
scarcely occurred to them that the word might have several senses, which
shaded off into one another, and were not capable of being comprehended
in a single notion. There is no trace of this reflection in Plato.
But neither is there any reason to think, even if the reflection had
occurred to him, that he would have been deterred from carrying on the
war with weapons fair or unfair against the outlaw Sophist.
III. The puzzle about 'Not-being' appears to us to be one of the most
unreal difficulties of ancient philosophy. We cannot understand the
attitude of mind which could imagine that falsehood had no existence, if
reality was denied to Not-being: How could such a question arise at
all, much less become of serious importance? The answer to this, and to
nearly all other difficulties of early Greek philosophy, is to be sought
for in the history of ideas, and the answer is only unsatisfactory
because our knowledge is defective. In the passage from the world
of sense and imagination and common language to that of opinion and
reflection the human mind was exposed to many dangers, and often
'Found no end in wandering mazes lost.'
On the other hand, the discovery of abstractions was the great source
of all mental improvement in after ages. It was the pushing aside of
the old, the revelation of the new. But each one of the company of
abstractions, if we may speak in the metaphorical language of Plato,
became in turn the tyrant of the mind, the dominant idea, which would
allow no other to have a share in the throne. This is especially true of
the Eleatic philosophy: while the absoluteness of Being was asserted
in every form of language, the sensible world and all the phenomena of
experience were comprehended under Not-being. Nor was any difficulty or
perplexity thus created, so long as the mind, lost in the contemplation
of Being, asked no more questions, and never thought of applying the
categories of Being or Not-being to mind or opinion or practical life.
But the negative as well as the positive idea had sunk deep into the
intellect of man. The effect of the paradoxes of Zeno extended far
beyond the Eleatic circle. And now an unforeseen consequence began to
arise. If the Many were not, if all things were names of the One, and
nothing could be predicated of any other thing, how could truth be
distinguished from falsehood? The Eleatic philosopher would have
replied that Being is alone true. But mankind had got beyond his barren
abstractions: they were beginning to analyze, to classify, to define,
to ask what is the nature of knowledge, opinion, sensation. Still less
could they be content with the description which Achilles gives in Homer
of the man whom his soul hates--
os chi eteron men keuthe eni phresin, allo de eipe.
For their difficulty was not a practical but a metaphysical one; and
their conception of falsehood was really impaired and weakened by a
metaphysical illusion.
The strength of the illusion seems to lie in the alternative: If we once
admit the existence of Being and Not-being, as two spheres which exclude
each other, no Being or reality can be ascribed to Not-being, and
therefore not to falsehood, which is the image or expression of
Not-being. Falsehood is wholly false; and to speak of true falsehood, as
Theaetetus does (Theaet.), is a contradiction in terms. The fallacy
to us is ridiculous and transparent,--no better than those which
Plato satirizes in the Euthydemus. It is a confusion of falsehood and
negation, from which Plato himself is not entirely free. Instead of
saying, 'This is not in accordance with facts,' 'This is proved by
experience to be false,' and from such examples forming a general notion
of falsehood, the mind of the Greek thinker was lost in the mazes of the
Eleatic philosophy. And the greater importance which Plato attributes
to this fallacy, compared with others, is due to the influence which
the Eleatic philosophy exerted over him. He sees clearly to a certain
extent; but he has not yet attained a complete mastery over the ideas of
his predecessors--they are still ends to him, and not mere instruments
of thought. They are too rough-hewn to be harmonized in a single
structure, and may be compared to rocks which project or overhang in
some ancient city's walls. There are many such imperfect syncretisms or
eclecticisms in the history of philosophy. A modern philosopher, though
emancipated from scholastic notions of essence or substance, might
still be seriously affected by the abstract idea of necessity; or though
accustomed, like Bacon, to criticize abstract notions, might not extend
his criticism to the syllogism.
The saying or thinking the thing that is not, would be the popular
definition of falsehood or error. If we were met by the Sophist's
objection, the reply would probably be an appeal to experience. Ten
thousands, as Homer would say (mala murioi), tell falsehoods and
fall into errors. And this is Plato's reply, both in the Cratylus
and Sophist. 'Theaetetus is flying,' is a sentence in form quite as
grammatical as 'Theaetetus is sitting'; the difference between the two
sentences is, that the one is true and the other false. But,
before making this appeal to common sense, Plato propounds for our
consideration a theory of the nature of the negative.
The theory is, that Not-being is relation. Not-being is the other of
Being, and has as many kinds as there are differences in Being.
This doctrine is the simple converse of the famous proposition of
Spinoza,--not 'Omnis determinatio est negatio,' but 'Omnis negatio est
determinatio';--not, All distinction is negation, but, All negation is
distinction. Not-being is the unfolding or determining of Being, and is
a necessary element in all other things that are. We should be careful
to observe, first, that Plato does not identify Being with Not-being; he
has no idea of progression by antagonism, or of the Hegelian vibration
of moments: he would not have said with Heracleitus, 'All things are
and are not, and become and become not.' Secondly, he has lost sight
altogether of the other sense of Not-being, as the negative of Being;
although he again and again recognizes the validity of the law of
contradiction. Thirdly, he seems to confuse falsehood with negation. Nor
is he quite consistent in regarding Not-being as one class of Being, and
yet as coextensive with Being in general. Before analyzing further the
topics thus suggested, we will endeavour to trace the manner in which
Plato arrived at his conception of Not-being.
In all the later dialogues of Plato, the idea of mind or intelligence
becomes more and more prominent. That idea which Anaxagoras employed
inconsistently in the construction of the world, Plato, in the Philebus,
the Sophist, and the Laws, extends to all things, attributing to
Providence a care, infinitesimal as well as infinite, of all creation.
The divine mind is the leading religious thought of the later works of
Plato. The human mind is a sort of reflection of this, having ideas
of Being, Sameness, and the like. At times they seem to be parted by a
great gulf (Parmenides); at other times they have a common nature, and
the light of a common intelligence.
But this ever-growing idea of mind is really irreconcilable with the
abstract Pantheism of the Eleatics. To the passionate language of
Parmenides, Plato replies in a strain equally passionate:--What! has
not Being mind? and is not Being capable of being known? and, if this
is admitted, then capable of being affected or acted upon?--in motion,
then, and yet not wholly incapable of rest. Already we have been
compelled to attribute opposite determinations to Being. And the
answer to the difficulty about Being may be equally the answer to the
difficulty about Not-being.
The answer is, that in these and all other determinations of any notion
we are attributing to it 'Not-being.' We went in search of Not-being and
seemed to lose Being, and now in the hunt after Being we recover both.
Not-being is a kind of Being, and in a sense co-extensive with Being.
And there are as many divisions of Not-being as of Being. To
every positive idea--'just,' 'beautiful,' and the like, there is a
corresponding negative idea--'not-just,' 'not-beautiful,' and the like.
A doubt may be raised whether this account of the negative is really
the true one. The common logicians would say that the 'not-just,'
'not-beautiful,' are not really classes at all, but are merged in one
great class of the infinite or negative. The conception of Plato, in
the days before logic, seems to be more correct than this. For the word
'not' does not altogether annihilate the positive meaning of the word
'just': at least, it does not prevent our looking for the 'not-just'
in or about the same class in which we might expect to find the 'just.'
'Not-just is not-honourable' is neither a false nor an unmeaning
proposition. The reason is that the negative proposition has really
passed into an undefined positive. To say that 'not-just' has no more
meaning than 'not-honourable'--that is to say, that the two cannot in
any degree be distinguished, is clearly repugnant to the common use of
language.
The ordinary logic is also jealous of the explanation of negation as
relation, because seeming to take away the principle of contradiction.
Plato, as far as we know, is the first philosopher who distinctly
enunciated this principle; and though we need not suppose him to have
been always consistent with himself, there is no real inconsistency
between his explanation of the negative and the principle of
contradiction. Neither the Platonic notion of the negative as the
principle of difference, nor the Hegelian identity of Being and
Not-being, at all touch the principle of contradiction. For what is
asserted about Being and Not-Being only relates to our most abstract
notions, and in no way interferes with the principle of contradiction
employed in the concrete. Because Not-being is identified with Other, or
Being with Not-being, this does not make the proposition 'Some have not
eaten' any the less a contradiction of 'All have eaten.'
The explanation of the negative given by Plato in the Sophist is a true
but partial one; for the word 'not,' besides the meaning of 'other,'
may also imply 'opposition.' And difference or opposition may be either
total or partial: the not-beautiful may be other than the beautiful, or
in no relation to the beautiful, or a specific class in various degrees
opposed to the beautiful. And the negative may be a negation of fact
or of thought (ou and me). Lastly, there are certain ideas, such as
'beginning,' 'becoming,' 'the finite,' 'the abstract,' in which
the negative cannot be separated from the positive, and 'Being' and
'Not-being' are inextricably blended.
Plato restricts the conception of Not-being to difference. Man is a
rational animal, and is not--as many other things as are not included
under this definition. He is and is not, and is because he is not.
Besides the positive class to which he belongs, there are endless
negative classes to which he may be referred. This is certainly
intelligible, but useless. To refer a subject to a negative class is
unmeaning, unless the 'not' is a mere modification of the positive, as
in the example of 'not honourable' and 'dishonourable'; or unless the