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The Parmenides of Plato belongs to a stage of philosophy which has passed
away. At first we read it with a purely antiquarian or historical
interest; and with difficulty throw ourselves back into a state of the
human mind in which Unity and Being occupied the attention of philosophers.
We admire the precision of the language, in which, as in some curious
puzzle, each word is exactly fitted into every other, and long trains of
argument are carried out with a sort of geometrical accuracy. We doubt
whether any abstract notion could stand the searching cross-examination of
Parmenides; and may at last perhaps arrive at the conclusion that Plato has
been using an imaginary method to work out an unmeaning conclusion. But
the truth is, that he is carrying on a process which is not either useless
or unnecessary in any age of philosophy. We fail to understand him,
because we do not realize that the questions which he is discussing could
have had any value or importance. We suppose them to be like the
speculations of some of the Schoolmen, which end in nothing. But in truth
he is trying to get rid of the stumblingblocks of thought which beset his
contemporaries. Seeing that the Megarians and Cynics were making knowledge
impossible, he takes their 'catch-words' and analyzes them from every
conceivable point of view. He is criticizing the simplest and most general
of our ideas, in which, as they are the most comprehensive, the danger of
error is the most serious; for, if they remain unexamined, as in a
mathematical demonstration, all that flows from them is affected, and the
error pervades knowledge far and wide. In the beginning of philosophy this
correction of human ideas was even more necessary than in our own times,
because they were more bound up with words; and words when once presented
to the mind exercised a greater power over thought. There is a natural
realism which says, 'Can there be a word devoid of meaning, or an idea
which is an idea of nothing?' In modern times mankind have often given too