14 Xenoph. Memor. iv. 5, 12.
Plato describes the Sophist as analogous to an angler. He traces the Sophist by descending subdivision from the acquisitive genus of art.
After giving the generic deduction of the angler from the comprehensive idea of Art, distributed into two sections, constructive and acquisitive, Plato proceeds to notice the analogy between the Sophist and an angler: after which he deduces the Sophist also from the acquisitive section of Art. The Sophist is an angler for rich young men.15 To find his place in the preceding descending series, we must take our departure from the bisection — hunters of walking animals, hunters of swimming animals. The Sophist is a hunter of walking animals: which may be divided into two classes, wild and tame. The Sophist hunts a species of tame animals — men. Hunters of tame animals are bisected into such as hunt by violent means (robbers, enslavers, despots, &c.),16 and such as hunt by persuasive means. Of the hunters by means of persuasion there are two kinds: those who hunt the public, and those who hunt individuals. The latter again may be divided into two classes: those who hunt to their own loss, by means of presents, such as lovers, &c., and those who hunt with a view to their own profit. To this latter class belongs the Sophist: pretending to associate with others for the sake of virtue, but really looking to his own profit.17
15 Plato, Sophist. p. 222 A.
16 Plato, Sophist. p. 222 C.
It illustrates the sentiment of Plato’s age respecting classification, when we see the great diversity of particulars which he himself, here as well as elsewhere, ranks under the general name θήρα, hunting — θήρα γὰρ παμπολύ τι πρᾶγμά ἐστι, περιειλημμένον ὀνόματι νῦν σχεδὸν ἑνί (Plato, Legg. viii. 822-823-824, and Euthyd. p. 290 B). He includes both στρατηγικὴ and φθειριστικὴ as varieties of θηρευτική, Sophist. p. 227 B.
Compare also the interesting conversation about θήρα ἀνθρώπων between Sokrates and Theodotê, Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 11, 7; and between Sokrates and Kritobulus, ii. 6, 29.
17 Plato, Sophist. p. 223 A.
The Sophist traced down from the same, by a second and different descending subdivision.
Again, we may find the Sophist by descending through a different string of subordinate classes from the genus — Acquisitive Art. The professors of this latter may be bisected into two sorts — hunters and exchangers. Exchangers are of two sorts — givers and sellers. Sellers again sell either their own productions, or the productions of others. Those who sell the productions of others are either fixed residents in one city, or hawkers travelling about from city to city. Hawkers again carry about for sale either merchandise for the body, or merchandise for the mind, such as music, poetry, painting, exhibitions of jugglery, learning, and intellectual accomplishments, and so forth. These latter (hawkers for the mind) may be divided into two sorts: those who go about teaching; for money, arts and literary accomplishments — and those who go about teaching virtue for money. They who go about teaching virtue for money are the Sophists.18 Or indeed if they sell virtue and knowledge for money, they are not the less Sophists — whether they buy what they sell from others, or prepare it for themselves — whether they remain in one city or become itinerant.
18 Plato, Sophist. p. 224 B.
A third series of subordinate classes will also bring us down from the genus — Acquisitive Art — down to the infima species — Sophist. In determining the class-place of the angler, we recognised a bisection of acquisitive art into acquirers by exchange, or mutual consent — and acquirers by appropriation, or without consent.19 These latter we divided according as they employed either force or stratagem: contenders and hunters. We then proceeded to bisect the class hunters, leaving the contenders without farther notice. Now let us take up the class contenders. It may be divided into two: competitors for a set prize (pecuniary or honorary), and fighters. The fighters go to work either body against body, violently — or tongue against tongue, as arguers. These arguers again fall into two classes: the pleaders, who make long speeches, about just or unjust, before the public assembly and dikastery: and the dialogists, who meet each other in short question and answer. The dialogists again are divided into two: the private, untrained antagonists, quarrelling with each other about the particular affairs of life (who form a species by themselves, since characteristic attributes may be assigned to them; though these attributes are too petty and too indefinite to have ever received a name in common language, or to deserve a name from us20) — and the trained practitioners or wranglers, who dispute not about particular incidents, but about just and unjust in general, and other general matters.21 Of wranglers again there are two sorts: the prosers, who follow the pursuit from spontaneous taste and attachment, not only without hope of gain, but to the detriment of their private affairs, incurring loss themselves, and wearying or bothering their hearers: and those who make money by such private dialogues. This last sort of wrangler is the Sophist.22
19 Plato, Sophist. p. 219 E.
20 Plato, Sophist. p. 225 C.
Ξένος. — Τοῦ δὲ ἀντιλογικοῦ, τὸ μὲν ὅσον περὶ τὰ ξυμβολαῖα ἀμφισβητεῖται μέν, εἰκῆ δὲ καὶ ἀτεχνῶς περὶ αὐτὸ πράττεται, ταῦτα θετέον μὲν εἶδος, ἐπείπερ αὐτὸ διέγνωκεν ὡς ἕτερον ὂν ὁ λόγος· ἀτὰρ ἐπωνυμίας οὔθ’ ὑπὸ τῶν ἔμπροσθεν ἔτυχεν, οὔτε νῦν ὑφ’ ἡμῶν τυχεῖν ἄξιον.
Θεαιτητ. — Ἀληθῆ· κατὰ σμικρὰ γὰρ λίαν καὶ παντοδαπὰ διῄρηται.
These words illustrate Plato’s view of an εἶδος or species. Any distinguishable attributes, however petty, and however multifarious, might be taken to form a species upon; but if they were petty and multifarious, there was no advantage in bestowing a specific name.
21 Plato, Sophist. p. 225 C. τὸ δέ γε ἔντεχνον, καὶ περὶ δικαίων αὐτῶν καὶ ἀδίκων καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὅλως ἀμφισβητοῦν, ἆρ’ οὐκ ἐριστικὸν αὖ λέγειν εἰθίσμεθα;
22 Plato, Sophist. p. 225 E.
The Sophist is traced down, from the genus of separating or discriminating art.
There is yet another road of class-distribution which will bring us down to the Sophist. A great number of common arts (carding wool, straining through a sieve, &c.) have, in common, the general attribute of separating matters confounded in a heap. Of separation there are two sorts: you may separate like from like (this has no established name) — or better from worse, which is called purification. Purification is of two sorts: either of body or of mind. In regard to body, the purifying agents are very multifarious, comprising not only men and animals, but also inanimate things: and thus including many varieties which in common estimation are mean, trivial, repulsive, or ludicrous. But all these various sentiments (observes Plato) we must disregard. We must follow out a real analogy wherever it leads us, and recognise a logical affinity wherever we find one; whether the circumstances brought together be vile or venerable, or some of them vile and some venerable, in the eyes of mankind. Our sole purpose is to improve our intelligence. With that view, all particulars are of equal value in our eyes, provided only they exhibit that real likeness which legitimates them as members of the same class — purifiers of body: the correlate of that other class which we now proceed to study — purifiers of mind.23
23 Plato, Sophist. pp. 226-227. 227 A: τῇ τῶν λόγων μεθόδῳ σπογγιστικῆς ἢ φαρμακοποσίας οὐδὲν ἧττον οὐδέ τι μᾶλλον τυγχάνει μέλον, εἰ τὸ μὲν σμικρά, τὸ δὲ μεγάλα ἡμᾶς ὠφελεῖ καθαῖρον. Τοῦ κτήσασθαι γὰρ ἕνεκεν νοῦν πασῶν τεχνῶν τὸ ξυγγενὲς καὶ τὸ μὴ ξυγγενὲς κατανοεῖν πειρωμένη, τιμᾷ πρὸς τοῦτο, ἐξ ἴσου πάσας, καὶ θάτερα τῶν ἑτέρων κατὰ τὴν ὁμοιότητα οὐδὲν ἡγεῖται γελοιότερα, σεμνότερον δέ τι τὸν διὰ στρατημικῆς ἢ φθειριστικῆς δηλοῦντα θηρευτικὴν οὐδὲν νενόμικεν, ἀλλ’ ὡς τὸ πολὺ χαυνότερον. Καὶ δὴ καὶ νῦν, ὅπερ ἤρου, τί προσεροῦμεν ὄνομα ξυμπάσας δυνάμεις, ὅσαι σῶμα εἴτε ἔμψυχον εἴτε ἄψυχον εἰλήχασι καθαίρειν, οὐδὲν αὐτῇ διοίσει, ποῖον τι λεχθὲν εὐπρεπέστατον εἶναι δόξει· μόνον ἐχέτω χωρὶς τῶν τῆς ψυχῆς καθάρσεων πάντα ξυνδῆσαν ὅσα ἄλλο τι καθαίρει. To maintain the equal scientific position of φθειριστική, as two different species under the genus θηρευτική, is a strong illustration.
Compare also Plato, Politikus, p. 266 D.
A similar admonition is addressed (in the Parmenidês, p. 130 E) by the old Parmenides to the youthful Sokrates, when the latter cannot bring himself to admit that there exist εἶδη or Forms of vulgar and repulsive objects, such as θρὶξ and πῆλος. Νεος γὰρ εἶ ἔτι, καὶ οὔπω σοῦ ἀντείληπται φιλοσοφία ὡς ἔτι ἀντιλήψεται κατ’ ἐμὴν δόξαν, ὅτε οὐδὲν αὐτῶν ἀτιμάσεις· νῦν δ’ ἔτι πρὸς ἀνθρώπων ἀποβλέπεις δόξας διὰ τὴν ἡλικίαν.
See above, ch. xxvii. p. 60, in my review of the Parmenidês.
In a logical classification, low and vulgar items deserve as much attention as grand ones. Conflict between emotional and scientific classification.
This precept (repeated by Plato also in the Politikus) respecting the principles of classification, deserves notice. It protests against, and seeks to modify, one of the ordinary turns in the associating principles of the human mind. With unreflecting men, classification is often emotional rather than intellectual. The groups of objects thrown together in such minds, and conceived in immediate association, are such as suggest the same or kindred emotions: pleasure or pain, love or hatred, hope or fear, admiration, contempt, disgust, jealousy, ridicule. Community of emotion is a stronger bond of association between different objects, than community in any attribute not immediately interesting to the emotions, and appreciable only intellectually. Thus objects which have nothing else in common, except appeal to the same earnest emotion, will often be called by the same general name, and will be constituted members of the same class. To attend to attributes in any other point of view than in reference to the amount and kind of emotion which they excite, is a process uncongenial to ordinary taste: moreover, if any one brings together, in the same wording, objects really similar, but exciting opposite and contradictory emotions, he usually provokes either disgust or ridicule. All generalizations, and all general terms connoting them, are results brought together by association and comparison of particulars somehow resembling. But if we look at the process of association in an unreflecting person, the resemblances which it fastens upon will be often emotional, not intellectual: and the generalizations founded upon such resemblances will be emotional also.
It is against this natural propensity that Plato here enters his protest, in the name of intellect and science. For the purpose of obtaining a classification founded on real, intrinsic affinities, we must exclude all reference to the emotions: we must take no account whether a thing be pleasing or hateful, sublime or mean:24 we must bring ourselves to rank objects useful or grand in the same logical compartment with objects hurtful or ludicrous. We must examine only whether the resemblance is true and real, justifying itself to the comparing intellect: and whether the class-term chosen be such as to comprise all these resemblances, holding them apart (μόνον ἐχέτω χωρὶς) from the correlative and opposing class.25
24 Compare Politikus, p. 266 D; Parmenidês, p. 130 E.
We see that Plato has thus both anticipated and replied to the objection of Socher (Ueber Platon’s Schriften, pp. 260-262), who is displeased with the minuteness of this classification, and with the vulgar objects to which it is applied. Socher contends that this is unworthy of Plato, and that it was peculiar to the subtle Megaric philosophers.
I think, on the contrary, that the purpose of illustrating the process of classification was not unworthy of Plato; that it was not unnatural to do this by allusion to vulgar trades or handicraft, at a time when no scientific survey of physical facts had been attempted; that the allusion to such vulgar trades is quite in the manner of Plato, and of Sokrates before him.
Stallbaum, in his elaborate Prolegomena both to the Sophistês and to the Politikus, rejects the conclusion of Socher, and maintains that both dialogues are the work of Plato. Yet he agrees to a certain extent in Socher’s premisses. He thinks that minuteness and over-refinement in classification were peculiarities of the Megaric philosophers, and that Plato intentionally pushes the classification into an extreme subtlety and minuteness, in order to parody their proceedings and turn them into ridicule. (Proleg. ad Sophist. pp. 32-36, ad Politic. pp. 54-55.)
But how do Socher and Stallbaum know that this extreme minuteness of subdivision into classes was a characteristic of the Megaric philosophers? Neither of them produce any proof of it. Indeed Stallbaum himself says, most truly (Proleg. ad Politic. p. 55) “Quæ de Megaricorum arte dialecticâ accepimus, sane quam sunt paucissima”. He might have added, that the little which we do hear about their dialectic, is rather adverse to this supposed minuteness of positive classification, than consonant with it. What we hear is, that they were extremely acute and subtle in contentious disputations — able assailants of the position of a logical opponent. But this talent has nothing to do with minuteness of positive classification: and is even indicative of a different turn of mind. Moreover, we hear about Eukleides, the chief of the Megaric school, that he enlarged the signification of the Summum Genus of Parmenides — the Ἓν καὶ Πᾶν. Eukleides called it Unum, Bonum, Simile et Idem Semper, Deus, &c. But we do not hear that Eukleides acknowledged a series of subordinate Genera or Species, expanding by logical procession below this primary Unum. As far as we can judge, this seems to have been wanting in his philosophy. Yet it is exactly these subordinate Genera or Species, which the Platonic Sophistês and Politikus supply in abundance, and even excess, conformably to the precept laid down by Plato in the Philêbus (p. 14). The words of the Sophistês (p. 216 D) rather indicate that the Eleatic Stranger is declared not to possess the character and attributes of Megaric disputation.
25 Though the advice here given by Plato about the principles of classification is very judicious, yet he has himself in this same dialogue set an example of repugnance to act upon it (Sophist. p. 231 A-B.) In following out his own descending series of partitions, he finds that the Sophist corresponds with the great mental purifier — the person who applies the Elenchus or cross-examining test, to youthful minds, so as to clear out that false persuasion of knowledge which is the great bar to all improvement. But though brought by his own process to this point, Plato shrinks from admitting it. His dislike towards the Sophist will not allow him. “The Sophist is indeed” (he says) “very like to this grand educator: but so also a wolf is very like to a dog — the most savage of animals to the most gentle. We must always be extremely careful about these likenesses: the whole body of them are most slippery. Still we cannot help admitting the Sophist to represent this improving process — that is, the high and true bred Sophist.”
It will be seen that Plato’s remark here about ὁμοιότητες contradicts what he had himself said before (p. 227 B). The reluctance to rank dog and wolf together, in the same class, is an exact specimen of that very mistake which he had been just pointing out for correction. The scientific resemblance between the two animals is very close; but the antithesis of sentiment, felt by men towards the one and the other, is extreme.
The purifier — a species under the genus discriminator — separates good from evil. Evil is of two sorts; the worst sort is, Ignorance, mistaking itself for knowledge.
After these just remarks on classification generally, the Eleate pursues the subdivision of his own theme. To purify the mind is to get rid of the evil, and retain or improve the good. Now evil is of two sorts — disease (injustice, intemperance, cowardice, &c.) and ignorance. Disease, which in the body is dealt with by the physician, is in the mind dealt with by the judicial tribunal: ignorance (corresponding to ugliness, awkwardness, disability, in the body, which it is the business of the gymnastic trainer to correct) falls under the treatment of the teacher or instructor.26 Ignorance again may be distributed into two heads: one, though special, being so grave as to counterbalance all the rest, and requiring to be set apart by itself — that is — ignorance accompanied with the false persuasion of knowledge.27
26 Plato, Sophist. pp. 228-229.
27 Plat. Soph. p. 229 C. Ἀγνοίας δ’ οὖν μέγα τί μοι δοκῶ καὶ χαλεπὸν ἀφωρισμένον ὁρᾷν εἶδος, πᾶσι τοῖς ἄλλοις αὐτῆς ἀντίσταθμον μέρεσι … Τὸ μὴ κατειδότα τι, δοκεῖν εἰδέναι.
Exhortation is useless against this worst mode of evil. Cross-examination, the shock of the Elenchus, must be brought to bear upon it. This is the sovereign purifier.
To meet this special and gravest case of ignorance, we must recognise a special division of the art of instruction or education. Exhortation, which is the common mode of instruction, and which was employed by our forefathers universally, is of no avail against this false persuasion of knowledge: which can only be approached and cured by the Elenchus, or philosophical cross-examination. So long as a man believes himself to be wise, you may lecture for ever without making impression upon him: you do no good by supplying food when the stomach is sick. But the examiner, questioning him upon those subjects which he professes to know, soon entangles him in contradictions with himself, making him feel with shame and humiliation his own real ignorance. After having been thus disabused — a painful but indispensable process, not to be accomplished except by the Elenchus — his mind becomes open and teachable, so that positive instruction may be communicated to him with profit. The Elenchus is the grand and sovereign purification: whoever has not been subjected to it, were he even the Great King, is impure, unschooled, and incompetent for genuine happiness.28
28 Plato, Sophist. p. 230 D-E.
The application of this Elenchus is the work of the Sophist, looked at on its best side. But looked at as he really is, he is a juggler who teaches pupils to dispute about every thing — who palms off falsehood for truth.
This cross-examining and disabusing process, brought to bear upon the false persuasion of knowledge and forming the only antidote to it, is the business of the Sophist looked at on its best side.29 But Plato will not allow the Elenchus, the great Sokratic accomplishment and mission, to be shared by the Sophists: and he finds or makes a subtle distinction to keep them off. The Sophist (so the Eleate proceeds) is a disputant, and teaches all his youthful pupils to dispute about everything as if they knew it — about religion, astronomy, philosophy, arts, laws, politics, and everything else. He teaches them to argue in each department against the men of special science: he creates a belief in the minds of others that he really knows all those different subjects, respecting which he is able to argue and cross-examine successfully: he thus both possesses, and imparts to his pupils, a seeming knowledge, an imitation and pretence of reality.30 He is a sort of juggler: an imitator who palms off upon persons what appears like reality when seen from a distance, but what is seen to be not like reality when contemplated closely.31
29 Plato, Sophist. p. 231 B. τῆς δὲ παιδευτικῆς ἁ περὶ τὴν μάταιον δοξοσοφίαν γιγνόμενος ἔλεγχος ἐν τῷ νῦν λόγῳ παραφανέντι μηδὲν ἄλλ’ ἡμῖν εἶναι λεγέσθω πλὴν ἡ γένει γενναία σοφιστική.
30 Plato, Sophist. pp. 232-233 C, 235 A. Sokrates tells us in the Platonic Apology (p. 23 A) that this was the exact effect which his own cross-examination produced upon the hearers: they supposed him to be wise on those topics on which he exposed ignorance in others. The Memorabilia of Xenophon exhibit the same impression as made by the conversation of Sokrates, even when he talked with artisans on their own arts. Sokrates indeed professed not to teach anyone — and he certainly took no fee for teaching. But we see plainly that this disclaimer imposed upon no one; that he did teach, though gratuitously; and that what he taught was, the art of cross-examination and dispute. We learn this not merely from his enemy, Aristophanes, and from the proceedings of his opponents, Kritias and Charikles (Xenoph. Memor. i. 2), but also from his own statement in the Platonic Apology (pp. 23 C. 37 E. 39 B), and from the language of Plato and Xenophon throughout. Plato is here puzzled to make out a clear line of distinction between the Elenchus of Sokrates, and the disputatious arguments of those Sophists whom he calls Eristic — name deserved quite as much by Sokrates as by any of them. Plato here accuses the Sophists of talking upon a great many subjects which they did not know, and teaching their pupils to do the same. This is exactly what Sokrates passed his life in doing, and what he did better than any one — on the negative side.
31 Plato, Sophist. pp. 235-236.
Doubt started by the Eleate. How can it be possible either to think or to speak falsely?
Here however (continues Plato) we are involved in a difficulty. How can a thing appear to be what it is not? How can a man who opines or affirms, opine or affirm falsely — that is, opine or affirm the thing that is not? To admit this, we must assume the thing that is not (or Non-Ens, Nothing) to have a real existence. Such an assumption involves great and often debated difficulties. It has been pronounced by Parmenides altogether inadmissible.32
32 Plato, Sophist. pp. 236 E — 237 A. πάντα ταῦτα ἐστι μεστὰ ἀπορίας ἀεὶ ἐν τῷ πρόσθεν χρόνῳ καὶ νῦν. Ὅπως γὰρ εἰπόντα χρὴ ψευδῆ λέγειν ἢ δοξάζειν ὄντως εἶναι, καὶ τοῦτο φθεγξάμενον ἐναντιολογίᾳ μὴ ξυνέχεσθαι, παντάπασι χαλεπόν … Τετόλμηκεν ὁ λόγος οὗτος ὑποθέσθαι τὸ μὴ ὂν εἶναι· ψεῦδος γὰρ οὐκ ἂν ἄλλως ἐγίγνετο ὄν.
We have already seen that Plato discussed this same question in the Theætêtus, and that after trying and rejecting many successive hypotheses to show how false supposition, or false affirmation, might be explained as possible, by a theory involving no contradiction, he left the question unsolved. He now resumes it at great length. It occupies more than half33 the dialogue. Near the close, but only then, he reverts to the definition of the Sophist.
33 From p. 236 D to p. 264 D.
He pursues the investigation of this problem by a series of questions.
First, the Eleate states the opinion which perplexes him, and which he is anxious either to refute or to explain away. (Unfortunately, we have no statement of the opinion, nor of the grounds on which it was held, from those who actually held it.) Non-Ens, or Nothing, is not the name of any existing thing, or of any Something. But every one who speaks must speak something: therefore if you try to speak of Non-Ens, you are trying to speak nothing — which is equivalent to not speaking at all.34 Moreover, to every Something, you can add something farther: but to Non-Ens, or Nothing, you cannot add any thing. (Non-Entis nulla sunt prædicata.) Now Number is something, or included among the Entia: you cannot therefore apply number, either singular or plural, to Non-Ens: and inasmuch as every thing conceived or described must be either one or many, it is impossible either to conceive or describe Non-Ens. You cannot speak of it without falling into a contradiction.35
34 Plato, Sophist. p. 237 E. The Eleate here recites this opinion, not as his own but as entertained by others, and as one which he did not clearly see through: in Republic (v. p. 478 B-C) we find Sokrates advancing a similar doctrine as his own. So in the Kratylus, where this same topic is brought under discussion (pp. 429 D, 430 A), Kratylus is represented as contending that false propositions were impossible: that propositions, improperly called false, were in reality combinations of sounds without any meaning, like the strokes on a bell.
35 Plato, Sophist. p. 238-239.
The Sophist will reject our definition and escape, by affirming that to speak falsely is impossible. He will require us to make out a rational theory, explaining Non-Ens.
When therefore we characterise the Sophist as one who builds up phantasms for realities — who presents to us what is not, as being like to what is, and as a false substitute for what is — he will ask us what we mean? If, to illustrate our meaning, we point to images of things in mirrors or clear water, he will pretend to be blind, and will refuse the evidence of sense: he will require us to make out a rational theory explaining Non-Ens or Nothing.36 But when we try to do this, we contradict ourselves. A phantasm is that which, not being a true counterpart of reality, is yet so like it as to be mistaken for reality. Quatenus phantasm, it is Ens: quatenus reality, it is Non-Ens: thus the same thing is both Ens, and Non-Ens: which we declared before to be impossible.37 When therefore we accuse the Sophist of passing off phantasms for realities, we suppose falsely: we suppose matters not existing, or contrary to those which exist: we suppose the existent not to exist, or the non-existent to exist But this assumes as done what cannot be done: since we have admitted more than once that Non-Ens can neither be described in language by itself, nor joined on in any manner to Ens.38
36 Plato, Sophist. pp. 239-240. καταγελάσεταί σου τῶν λόγων, ὅταν ὡς βλέποντι λέγῃς αὐτῷ, προσποιούμενος οὔτε κάτοπτρα οὔτε ὕδατα γιγνώσκειν, οὔτε τὸ παράπαν ὄψιν· τὸ δ’ ἐκ τῶν λόγων ἐρωτήσει σε μόνον.
37 Plato, Sophist. p. 240 B.
38 Plato, Sophist. p. 241 B. τῷ γὰρ μὴ ὄντι τὸ ὂν προσάπτειν ἡμᾶς πολλάκις ἀναγκάζεσθαι, διομολογησαμένους νῦν δή που τοῦτο εἶναι πάντων ἀδυνατώτατον.
Stating the case in this manner, we find that to suppose falsely, or affirm falsely, is a contradiction. But there is yet another possible way out of the difficulty (the Eleate continues).
The Eleate turns from Non-Ens to Ens. Theories of various philosophers about Ens.
Let us turn for a moment (he says) from Non-Ens to Ens. The various physical philosophers tell us a good deal about Ens. They differ greatly among themselves. Some philosophers represent Ens as triple, comprising three distinct elements, sometimes in harmony, sometimes at variance with each other. Others tell us that it is double — wet and dry — or hot and cold. A third sect, especially Xenophanes and Parmenides, pronounce it to be essentially One. Herakleitus blends together the different theories, affirming that Ens is both many and one, always in process of disjunction and conjunction: Empedokles adopts a similar view, only dropping the always, and declaring the process of disjunction to alternate with that of conjunction, so that Ens is sometimes Many, sometimes One.39
39 Plato, Sophist. p. 242 D-E.
Difficulties about Ens are as great as those about Non-Ens.
Now when I look at these various theories (continues the Eleate), I find that I do not follow or understand them; and that I know nothing more or better about Ens than about Non-Ens. I thought, as a young man, that I understood both: but I now find that I understand neither.40 The difficulties about Ens are just as great as those about Non-Ens. What do these philosophers mean by saying that Ens is double or triple? that there are two distinct existing elements — Hot and Cold — or three? What do you mean by saying that Hot and Cold exist? Is existence any thing distinct from Hot and Cold? If so, then there are three elements in all, not two. Do you mean that existence is something belonging to both and affirmed of both? Then you pronounce both to be One: and Ens, instead of being double, will be at the bottom only One.
40 Plato, Sophist. p. 243 B.
Whether Ens is Many or One? If Many, how Many? Difficulties about One and the Whole. Theorists about Ens cannot solve them.
Such are the questions which the Eleatic spokesman of Plato puts to those philosophers who affirm Ens to be plural: He turns next to those who affirm Ens to be singular, or Unum. Do you mean that Unum is identical with Ens — and are they only two names for the same One and only thing? There cannot be two distinct names belonging to one and the same thing: and yet, if this be not so, one of the names must be the name of nothing. At any rate, if there be only one name and one thing, still the name itself is different from the thing — so that duality must still be recognised. Or if you take the name as identical with the One thing, it will either be the name of nothing, or the name of a name.41