quently it is impossible to deduce whiteness from the Good,
because the Good does not contain whiteness. You cannot get out of it
what is not in it. When Plato deduced the many from the one, he did so
only by showing that the One contains the many. He cannot deduce
whiteness from goodness, because goodness does not contain whiteness.

The lower Ideas thus have not the character of necessity. They are
mere facts. And the hope that we shall find their necessity in the
supreme Idea fails. But suppose we waive this. Suppose we grant that
there must be an Idea of whiteness, because there is an Idea of the
Good. Then why is there an Idea of the Good? What is the necessity of
that? We cannot see any necessity in it. What we said of the other
Ideas applies with equal force to the highest Idea. The Good may be a
necessary Idea, but Plato has not shown it.

Thus, though Plato named reason as the Absolute, {246} and though
reason is a self-explanatory principle, his account of the detailed
content of reason is so unsatisfactory that none of the concepts which
he includes in it are really shown to be rational. His philosophy
breaks down upon the second test as it did upon the first. He has
neither explained the world from the Ideas, nor has he made the Ideas
explain themselves.

There is one other defect in Plato's system which is of capital
importance. There runs throughout it a confusion between the notions
of reality and existence. To distinguish between existence and reality
is an essential feature of all idealism. Even if we go back to the dim
idealism of the Eleatics, we shall see this. Zeno, we saw, denied
motion, multiplicity, and the world of sense. But he did not deny the
existence of the world. That is an impossibility. Even if the world is
delusion, the delusion exists. What he denied was the reality of
existence. But if reality is not existence, what is it? It is Being,
replied the Eleatics. But Being does not exist. Whatever exists is
this or that particular sort of being. Being itself is not anywhere to
be found. Thus the Eleatics first denied that existence is reality,
and then that reality exists. They did not themselves draw this
conclusion, but it is involved in their whole position.

With a fully developed idealism, like Plato's, this ought to be still
clearer. And, in a sense, it is. The individual horse is not real. But
it certainly exists. The universal horse is real. But it does not
exist. But, upon this