feres 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
class is characterized by the absence rather than the presence of a
particular quality.

Nor is it easy to see how Not-being any more than Sameness or Otherness
is one of the classes of Being. They are aspects rather than classes of
Being. Not-being can only be included in Being, as the denial of some
particular class of Being. If we attempt to pursue such airy phantoms
at all, the Hegelian identity of Being and Not-being is a more apt and
intelligible expression of the same mental phenomenon. For Plato has
not distinguished between the Being which is prior to Not-being, and the
Being which is the negation of Not-being (compare Parm.).

But he is not thinking of this when he says that Being comprehends
Not-being. Again, we should probably go back for the true explanation
to the influence which the Eleatic philosophy exercised over him. Under
'Not-being' the Eleatic had included all the realities of the sensible
world. Led by this association and by the common use of language, which
has bee