ea of the One. For the many is many ones. Hence the One
and the many cannot be separated in the Eleatic manner. Every unity
must be a unity of the many. And every many is _ipso facto_ a unity,
since we think the many in one idea, and, if we did not, we should not
even know that it is a many. The Absolute must therefore be neither an
abstract One, nor an abstract many. It must be a many in one.

Similarly, Being cannot totally exclude not-being. They are, just as
much as the One and the many, correlatives, which mutually involve
each other. The being of anything is the not-being of its opposite.
The being of light is the not-being of darkness. All being, therefore,
has not-being in it.

Let us apply these principles to the theory of Ideas. The absolute
reality, the world of Ideas, is many, since {198} there are many
Ideas, but it is one, because the Ideas are not isolated units, but
members of a single organized system. There is, in fact, a hierarchy
of Ideas. Just as the one Idea presides over many individual things of
which it is the common element, so one higher Idea presides over many
lower Ideas, and is the common element in them. And over this higher
Idea, together with many others, a still higher Idea will rule. For
example, the Ideas of whiteness, redness, blueness, are all subsumed
under the one Idea of colour. The Ideas of sweetness and bitterness
come under the one Idea of taste. But the Ideas of colour and taste
themselves stand under the still higher Idea of quality. In this way,
the Ideas form, as it were, a pyramid, and to this pyramid there must
be an apex. There must be one highest Idea, which is supreme over all
the others. This Idea will be the one final and absolutely real Being
which is the ultimate ground, of itself, of the other Ideas, and of
the entire universe. This Idea is, Plato tells us, the Idea of the
Good. We have seen that the world of Ideas is many, and we now see
that it is one. For it is one single system culminating in one supreme
Idea, which is the highest expression of its unity. Moreover, each
separate Idea is, in the same way, a many in one. It is one in regard
to itself. That is to say, if we ignore its relations to other Ideas,
it is, in itself, single. But as it has also many relations to other
Ideas, it is, in this way, a multiplicity.

Every Idea is likewise a Being which contains not-being. For each Idea
combines with some Ideas and not with others. Thus the Idea of
corpor