ed by the doubtful tradition of his retirement to
Megara after the death of Socrates. For Megara was within a walk of
Athens (Phaedr.), and Plato might have learned the Megarian doctrines
without settling there.

We may begin by remarking that the theses of Parmenides are expressly
said to follow the method of Zeno, and that the complex dilemma, though
declared to be capable of universal application, is applied in this
instance to Zeno's familiar question of the 'one and many.' Here, then,
is a double indication of the connexion of the Parmenides with the
Eristic school. The old Eleatics had asserted the existence of Being,
which they at first regarded as finite, then as infinite, then as
neither finite nor infinite, to which some of them had given what
Aristotle calls 'a form,' others had ascribed a material nature only.
The tendency of their philosophy was to deny to Being all predicates.
The Megarians, who succeeded them, like the Cynics, affirmed that no
predicate could be asserted of any subject; they also converted the
idea of Being into an abstraction of Good, perhaps with the view of
preserving a sort of neutrality or indifference between the mind and
things. As if they had said, in the language of modern philosophy:
'Being is not only neither finite nor infinite, neither at rest nor in
motion, but neither subjective nor objective.'

This is the track along which Plato is leading us. Zeno had attempted to
prove the existence of the one by disproving the existence of the many,
and Parmenides seems to aim at proving the existence of the subject
by showing the contradictions which follow from the assertion of any
predicates. Take the simplest of all notions, 'unity'; you cannot even
assert being or time of this without involving a contradiction. But is
the contradiction also the final conclusion? Probably no more than of
Zeno's denial of the many, or of Parmenides' assault upon the Ideas; no
more than of the earlier dialogues 'of search.' To us there seems to
be no residuum of this long piece of dialectics. But to the mind of
Parmenides and Plato, 'Gott-betrunkene Menschen,' there still remained
the idea of 'being' or 'good,' which could not be conceived, defined,
uttered, but could not be got rid of. Neither of them would have
imagined that their disputation ever touched the Divine Being (compare
Phil.). The same difficulties about Unity and Being are raised in the
Sophist; but there only as preliminary to their