CHAP. same view Stilpo expressed, when he refused to allow the general conception to apply to individual things, on the ground that a general conception implies something quite different from every individual thing, and not like these only existing from a definite time.' In this respect the Megarians again agree with Plato. Whilst Plato, however, regarded species as living spiritual forces, Euclid, following in the steps of Parmenides, denied every kind of motion to being. He, therefore, reduced action and passion to the sphere of the becoming. Of being, he asserted, you can neither predicate action, nor passion, nor yet motion.3 1 Diog. ii. 119, says of him: ἔλεγε, τὸν λέγοντα ἄνθρωπον εἶναι undeva (in which we suggest εἰπεῖν instead of εἶναι), οὔτε γὰρ τόνδε λέγειν οὔτε τόνδε. τί γὰρ μᾶλλον τόνδε ἢ τόνδε; οὔτε ἄρα τόνδε. καὶ πάλιν· τὸ λάχανον οὔκ ἐστι τὸ δεικνύμενον. λάχανον μὲν γὰρ ἦν πρὸ μυρίων ἐτῶν· οὐκ ἄρα ἐστὶ τοῦτο λάχανον. Diogenes introduces this with the remark: dewòs dè ayav dv év Toîs épιOTIKOîs ȧvýρel kal тà etdŋ, and it would in itself be possible, that Stilpo and others had derived their hostility to general conceptions, and especially to the Platonic ideas, from the Cynic School. But the above examples are not directed against the reality of groups expressed by a general conception, but against the reality of particular things. Stilpo denies that the individual is a man, because the expression man means something univer sal and different from any 2 Probably expressions like 'Hi quoque multa in Platone,' said of the Megarians by Cic. Acad. iv. 42, 129, refer to such points of similarity. Plato, Soph. 248, C.: λéγουσιν, ὅτι γενέσει μὲν μέτεστι τοῦ πάσχειν καὶ ποιεῖν δυνάμεως, πρὸς δὲ οὐσίαν τούτων οὐδετέρου τὴν δύναμιν ἁρμόττειν φασίν. It is accordingly afterwards repeatedly stated as their view: Connected with this denial of the becoming is the assertion, probably coming from Euclid, certainly from his school, that capacity does not exist beyond the time of its exercise; and that thus what is actual is alone possible.' What is simply possible but not actual, would at the same time be and not be. Here would be the very contradiction which Parmenides thought to discover in the becoming, and the change from the possible to the actual would be one of those changes which Euclid could not harmonise with the conception of being. Hence, only what is imma 2 [τὸ παντελῶς ὂν] ἀκίνητον ἑστὸς εἶναι. ἀκίνητον τὸ παράπαν ἑσTával, and in opposition to this view Plato requires: al Tò κινούμενον δὴ καὶ κίνησιν συγχωρητέον ὡς ὄντα . . . . μήτε τῶν ἓν ἢ καὶ πολλὰ εἴδη λεγόντων τὸ πᾶν ἑστηκὸς ἀποδέχεσθαι.—Aristocl. in Eus. Pr. Ev. xiv. 17, 1. The proofs by which the Megarians denied motion will be described hereafter. It does not, however, seem likely that the objections raised to the theory of ideas in the first part of Plato's Parmenides are of Megarian origin, as Stallbaum, Pl. Parm. 57 and 65, supposes. Arist. Metaph. ix. 3: eiol δέ τινες οἵ φασιν, οἷον οἱ Μεγαρικοὶ, ὅταν ἐνεργῇ μόνον δύνασθαι, ὅταν δὲ μὴ ἐνεργῇ οὐ δύνασθαι. οἷον τὸν μὴ οἰκοδομοῦντα οὐ δύνασθαι οἰκοδομεῖν, ἀλλὰ τὸν οἰκοδομοῦντα ὅταν οἰκοδομῇ· ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων. In refuting this statement Aristotle observes that it would make all motion and becoming impossible; which was just what the Megarians wanted. Further par ticulars on this point will be 2 Hartenstein, p. 205, is of CHAP. XII. CHAP. (2) The Good. terial terials, tools and intentions, tions, p. 230, 2. Grote to defend the Megarians attributes to them reflections, which we have no right to attribute to them. See p. 133 and 147. 2 That his assertions about the good should have nothing to do with the Socratic knowledge (Hermann, Ges. Abhandlung, 242) could only be accepted on the supposition that that knowledge was not knowledge about the good, and that Euclid was not a pupil of Socrates. Nor can it be readily conceded that a pure Eleatic philosopher, if he had only moved in an ethical sphere of ideas, would have treated this part of philosophy in the same way as Euclid. As long as he remained a pure Eleatic philosopher, he could not have taken this ethical direction and have placed the conception of the good at the head of his system. and the same thing, the Good. For the same reason the moral aim, as Socrates had already shown, is always one-the knowledge of the Good,-and if we speak of many virtues, all these are but varying names for one and the same virtue.2 What, however, is the relation of other things to this one Good? Even Euclid, as accounts tell us, denied any existence to what is not good; from which it follows immediately, that besides the Good nothing real exists. This statement is on better authority attributed to the later Megarian School.1 Therewith many conceptions, the reality of which had been originally assumed, were destroyed as such, and reduced, in as far as any reality was admitted about them, to mere names of the Good.5 Here, 1 Cic. Acad. iv. 42, 129: Megarici qui id bonum solum esse dicebant, quod esset unum et simile et idem semper (olov, ὅμοιον ταὐτόν). Diog. ii. 106, says of Euclid: ouros v To ἀγαθὸν ἀπεφαίνετο πολλοῖς ὀνόμασι καλούμενον· ὅτε μὲν γὰρ φρόνησιν, ὅτε δὲ θεὸν, καὶ ἄλλοτε νοῦν καὶ τὰ λοιπά. 2 Diog. vii. 161, says of the Stoie Aristo: ἀρετάς τ' οὔτε πολλὰς εἰσῆγεν, ὡς ὁ Ζήνων, οὔτε μίαν πολλοῖς νόμασι καλουμένην. ὡς οἱ Μεγαρικοί. That this one virtue was the knowledge of the good, appears not only from the internal connection of the system and its external relation to Socrates, but also from Cicero 1. c. who asserts: a Menedemo autem Eretriaci appellati; quorum omne bonum in mente positum et ... mentis acie, qua verum cerne- * Diog. ii. 106: τὰ δὲ ἀντι- 4 Arist. in Eus. Pr. Ev. xiv. 17, 1: ὅθεν ἠξίουν οὗτοί γε [οἱ περὶ Στίλπωνα καὶ τοὺς Μεγαρικοὺς] τὸ ὂν ἓν εἶναι καὶ τὸ μὴ ὂν ἕτερον εἶναι, μηδὲ γεννᾶσθαί τι μηδὲ φθείρεσθαι μηδὲ κινεῖσθαι тожарáжаv. Arist. Metaph. xiv. 4; 1091, b, 13, refers to Plato, and can hardly be applied to the Megarians. 5 Prantl's view, p. 35, that the conceptions of the Megarians must invariably have a nominalistic meaning, does CHAP. XII. СНАР. C. Eristic. probably, traces of gradual development in the Megarian doctrine are to be found. Euclid apparently first spoke of a plurality of essential conceptions in contrast to objects of sense, and this form of teaching belongs primarily to a time in which his system was being developed out of this contrast.1 At a later period the Megarians appear to have used the manifoldness of conceptions for the purpose of attacking popular notions,2 otherwise keeping it in the background, and confining themselves to the essential oneness of being and the Good. Inconsistent, no doubt, they were; yet we can understand how they became involved in this contradiction by gradually pushing the Socratic theory of conceptions to the abstract doctrine of the Eleatic One.3 The sharper the contrast which they presented not agree with the statements 1 Plato, at least in the pas- 3 Henne, p. 121, tries to get over the difficulty in another way. The Megarians, he believes, attributed being to each particular idea, in as far as it was a unity, and various conceptions were used by them to express various kinds of the good. But this very pointthe being of various kinds of good-was what the Megarians denied. Starting with the oneness of being they cannot have arrived at the notion of a manifoldness of conceptions, since this oneness excludes in its abstract form any development or subordinate distinction. But it is quite possible that the Socratic conceptions may gradually have been lost in the Eleatic unity. |