t a beginning or end; or is or
is not infinite, or infinitely divisible. Or again: if God is or is not
identical with his laws; or if man is or is not identical with the laws
of nature. We can easily see that here are many subjects for thought,
and that from these and similar hypotheses questions of great interest
might arise. And we also remark, that the conclusions derived from
either of the two alternative propositions might be equally impossible
and contradictory.

When we ask what is the object of these paradoxes, some have answered
that they are a mere logical puzzle, while others have seen in them an
Hegelian propaedeutic of the doctrine of Ideas. The first of these views
derives support from the manner in which Parmenides speaks of a similar
method being applied to all Ideas. Yet it is hard to suppose that Plato
would have furnished so elaborate an example, not of his own but of
the Eleatic dialectic, had he intended only to give an illustration of
method. The second view has been often overstated by those who, like
Hegel himself, have tended to confuse ancient with modern philosophy.
We need not deny that Plato, trained in the school of Cratylus and
Heracleitus, may have seen that a contradiction in terms is sometimes
the best expression of a truth higher than either (compare Soph.). But
his ideal theory is not based on antinomies. The correlation of Ideas
was the metaphysical difficulty of the age in which he lived; and the
Megarian and Cynic philosophy was a 'reductio ad absurdum' of their
isolation. To restore them to their natural connexion and to detect the
negative element in them is the aim of Plato in the Sophist. But his
view of their connexion falls very far short of the Hegelian identity
of Being and Not-being. The Being and Not-being of Plato never merge in
each other, though he is aware that 'determination is only negation.'

After criticizing the hypotheses of others, it may appear presumptuous
to add another guess to the many which have been already offered. May we
say, in Platonic language, that we still seem to see vestiges of a track
which has not yet been taken? It is quite possible that the obscurity
of the Parmenides would not have existed to a contemporary student of
philosophy, and, like the similar difficulty in the Philebus, is
really due to our ignorance of the mind of the age. There is an obscure
Megarian influence on Plato which cannot wholly be cleared up, and is
not much illustrat