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Plato s Parmenides 1st Edition Samuel Scolnicov Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): Samuel Scolnicov
ISBN(s): 9781417525515, 1417525517
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 1.08 MB
Year: 2003
Language: english
Plato’s Parmenides
The Joan Palevsky Imprint in Classical Literature

In honor of beloved Virgil—

“O degli altri poeti onore e lume . . .”

—Dante, Inferno
 Plato’s Parmenides

TRANSLATED WITH INTRODUCTION AND COMMENTARY BY

Samuel Scolnicov

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley Los Angeles London
 The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous
contribution to this book provided by Joan Palevsky.

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2003 by the Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Plato.
[Parmenides. English]
Plato’s Parmenides / translated with introduction and
commentary [by] Samuel Scolnicov.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and indexes.
ISBN 0-520-22403-5 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Socrates. 2. Parmenides. 3. Zeno, of Elea. 4. Ontology—
Early works to 1800. 5. Reasoning—Early works to 1800.
6. Dialectic—Early works to 1800. 7. Plato. Parmenides.
I. Scolnicov, Samuel. II. Title.
B378.A5 S3613 2001
184—dc21 00-021808

Manufactured in the United States of America

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum require-
ments of ANSI / NISO Z39 0.48-1992(R 1997) (Permanence
of Paper).8
 contents

list of tables and figures / vii

abbreviations / ix
acknowledgments / xi

Introduction / 1
Plato Versus Parmenides / 1
The Problem of Method / 3
Elenchus / 6
Aporia and Euporia / 8
The Method of Hypothesis / 9
Two Principles of Noncontradiction / 12
The Verb ‘to be’ / 16
Parmenidean Being and Platonic Being / 18
The Dialogue / 22
A Note on the Translation / 39

parmenides
Proem / 43
The Frame Story / 43
The Problem: The Many Cannot Be / 45
The Thesis: Forms Participate in Each Other,
and Sensible Things Participate in Forms / 48

Part I: Aporia / 53
The Dilemma / 55
The Necessity of Positing Forms / 73
The Method / 74
vi contents

Part II: Euporia / 79

Hypothesis: The One Is / 80
Argument I / 80
Argument II / 94
Argument III / 139
Argument IV / 144
Hypothesis: The One Is Not / 147
Argument V / 147
Argument VI / 157
Argument VII / 159
Argument VIII / 163
General Conclusion / 166

bibliography / 167
index locorum / 175
index nominum / 183
index of greek words and expressions / 187
general index / 189
 tables and figures

TABLES

1. The sequence of the Theorems and their categories in Part II of Plato’s

Parmenides / 30
2. Parallel categories in the Theorems in Part II of Plato’s Parmenides and
in the poem of Parmenides, fragment 28 B 8 DK / 33

FIGURES

1. The structure of the arguments in Part I of Plato’s Parmenides / 24

2. The structure of the Arguments in Part II of Plato’s Parmenides / 28

3. The categories of being and their relations in Part II of Plato’s

Parmenides / 32

vii
 abbreviations

In this volume, fragments of the poem of Parmenides are cited as they ap-
pear in the edition of Diels and Kranz (1951), volume 1, number 28, sec-
tion B. The other works cited in abbreviated form in the text and notes are
listed immediately below.

DK Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, eds., Die Fragmente der Vor-
sokratiker, 6th ed., 3 vols. Berlin: Weidmann, 1951.
LSJ H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, eds., A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., rev.
H. S. Jones. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940.

ix
 acknowledgments

This book has been a long time in the making. It resulted from a growing
awareness, over almost twenty years, of the importance of the Parmenides for
the understanding of Plato’s mature metaphysics and of the gradual real-
ization that nothing short of a line-by-line commentary could do justice to
its intricacies and its far-reaching implications.
I have discussed the approaches and ideas developed in this book with
many more people than I can hope to thank adequately. Some, however, de-
serve special mention. I am, first of all, indebted to my students and my col-
leagues over the years in seminars at the Universities of Jerusalem, Catania,
Padua, Toronto, Irvine, and Paris-I for testing with me the interpretations
advanced. To those from the Cambridge B-Club and Monique Dixsaut’s sem-
inar at Paris-XII, I am thankful for healthy skepticism. To Denis O’Brien and
Rosamond Kent Sprague I am grateful for their encouragement and for hav-
ing read one of the final versions of this book, questioning points I too read-
ily took for granted.
At the University of California Press, Paul Psoinos went through the man-
uscript with a fine-toothed comb, improving the English style, keeping an
eye on the accuracy of the translation, and copy-editing the book in painstak-
ing detail. This book is much better for his efforts. Cindy Fulton and Kate
Toll were responsible for its production, which proved sometimes to be quite
intricate, always ready in the best of spirits to help with their experience and
enthusiasm.
Many errors and oversights no doubt remain. For those, I must take full
responsibility.

Paris, May 2002

xi
xii acknowledgments

J. A. Palmer’s book, Plato’s Reception of Parmenides (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1999) came to my attention when this book was already in press, and so I
have not been able to take full account of it, as it deserves. However, in the
present book, I am less concerned than Palmer with Plato’s reception of Par-
menides. As will become clear, I acknowledge Plato’s debt to Parmenides, as
Palmer does, but I see Plato’s main aim in the Parmenides as to clarify his own
metaphysical standpoint in opposition to Parmenides and improve on him
while, at the same time, stressing the absolute necessity of Parmenides’ con-
ception of being for any non-nominalistic metaphysics and epistemology.
 Introduction
Toute interprétation du dialogue qui laissera séparées les deux parties de l’oeuvre ne
pourrait nous satisfaire.
—wahl (1951), 8

PLATO VERSUS PARMENIDES

Of all Plato’s dialogues, the Parmenides is notoriously the most difficult to in-
terpret. Scholars of all periods have violently disagreed about its very aims
and subject matter. The interpretations have ranged from reading the dia-
logue as an introduction to the whole of Platonic—and more often Neo-
platonic—metaphysics1 to viewing it as a record of unsolved (and perhaps
unsolvable) “honest perplexities,”2 as protreptic “mental gymnastics,”3 as a
collection of sophistic tricks,4 or even as an elaborate (though admittedly
tedious) joke.5
Part I of the dialogue and especially the Third Man Argument have no
doubt received more than their fair share of effort and ingenuity. During
the last forty-odd years, the Third Man Argument has undergone detailed
scrutiny by logicians, philosophers, classicists, and, in general, anyone who
felt any connection with the subject, however distant. But while fine logical
tools have been used to interpret the Theaetetus and the Sophist with impor-
tant and interesting results, the Parmenides as a whole seems to have been,

1. For a summary of Neoplatonic interpretations, see Dodds (1928), Wundt (1935). The
esotericist interpretation (e.g., Migliori [1990]), influenced by Krämer, can be seen as a variant
of this trend. In the same vein, Séguy-Duclot (1998) interprets the dialogue as pointing beyond
itself, to higher levels, up to a henological point of view above ontology.
2. Vlastos (1965b [1954]), 145.
3. Grote (1875), III, chap. 27; Peck (1953–54); cf. Kutschera (1995). See also Wilamowitz
(1948), I 402; most recently Gill, “Introduction,” in Gill and Ryan (1996). Klibansky (1943: 28
n. 1) attributes such a view already to Alcinous (Albinus), possibly on the strength of chaps. 5
and 6 of his Didaskalikos.
4. E.g., Owen (1986 [1970]).
5. Cf., e.g., Taylor (1934), 29.

1
2 introduction

until quite recently, rather neglected. Gilbert Ryle’s renewed suggestion that
Parts I and II of the dialogue are only loosely connected (and were proba-
bly composed at different times) is perhaps not always explicitly accepted,
but until recently it has with few exceptions been as a rule tacitly assumed,
especially in the English-language literature, at least for practical purposes.6
In this dialogue, Plato directly engages Parmenides, the most serious chal-
lenge to his own philosophy.7 Plato’s interest in Parmenides is not new. From
the beginning, his forms were meant to meet the requirements of Par-
menidean being.8 Plato himself had reservations about Parmenides’ method
and doctrine, mainly in connection with his own doctrine of participation.9
But never before had Plato confronted Parmenidean philosophy so directly
and at such depth. From a Parmenidean point of view, there is no room for
the most basic of Plato’s ontological concepts: the concept of mevqexiˇ, ‘par-
ticipation’.10 Unless a comprehensive alternative is offered to Parmenides’
logic and ontology, participation will remain unintelligible, and the Platonic
philosophical program will be nothing short of incoherent.
In the Parmenides, Plato reexamines his doctrine of forms and participa-
tion as developed in his central metaphysical dialogues, the Phaedo, the Sym-
posium, and the Republic, and provides it with a rigorous logical foundation.
Part I of the dialogue is an examination of the concept of mevqexiˇ from an
Eleatic point of view. According to the Parmenidean view (or Plato’s version
of it), being does not admit of distinctions. Even if there could be two on-
tological domains, or two types of entities, a relation straddling them both,
like mevqexiˇ, would still be impossible. In Part II, Plato distinguishes between
two modes of being, provides an extensive analysis of each, dissolves the apo-

6. See Apelt (1919); Wundt (1935); Ryle (1965), 145; cf. also Thesleff (1982). But the tide
may be turning: see, e.g., Miller (1986); Meinwald (1991); Gill, “Introduction,” in Gill and Ryan
(1996); Turnbull (1998). For summaries of previous interpretations, see Runciman (1965
[1959]), 167–76; Niewöhner (1971); Migliori (1990).
7. Calogero (1932) recognized the anti-Eleatic nature of the dialogue but read it as an iron-
ical reductio ad absurdum of the “eleatismo megarico . . . di paternità zenoniana” in the manner
of Gorgias’s Peri; tou¸ mh; o[ntoˇ.
8. Parmenides’ influence on Plato has been recognized since Antiquity: e.g., by Proclus
in his commentary on the dialogue. See also Zeller (1876), 148 f. The question whether Par-
menides held that to; ejonv is one in the sense that there exists only one thing (Mourelatos [1970],
130 ff.; Curd [1991]) is irrelevant at this point. It is enough that Plato accepted that, at least
for certain purposes, each of the forms must satisfy the restrictions that Parmenides imposed
on his ejovn.
9. Cf., e.g., Phaedo 100c4–6. See also below, pp. 12–16, on the Principle of Noncontradic-
tion, and pp. 3–6, on method.
10. Throughout this volume, single quotation marks are used to indicate translations,
glosses, concepts, hypotheses, and words as such. Double quotation marks are used for direct
quotations and as so-called scare quotes; and language adopted from the translation, but not
taken directly from it, is also shown within double quotation marks.
 introduction 3

riae of Part I, and prepares the ground for the metaphysics of the Sophist. By
his own admission, Plato may have murdered “our father Parmenides” only
in the Sophist,11 but the weapon of the crime was already cocked and pointed
in the Parmenides. On this interpretation, the Parmenides does indeed occupy
a central place in the development of Plato’s late ontology, though not as a
turning point.12
An examination of the overall strategy of the Parmenides shows that the
two parts of the dialogue form a coherent and integrated whole, in which
Part II lays the foundation for an alternative to Eleatic ontology and method-
ology, thus providing what Plato considers to be an adequate answer to the
dilemma construed by Parmenides in Part I of the dialogue. It will turn out,
however, that Plato thought that his conception of mevqexiˇ as being quali-
fiedly cannot totally supplant but can only complement the Parmenidean
conception of being absolutely.13
Such an interpretation of the dialogue permits a unified and economi-
cal explication of its eight Arguments and the Appendix on participation in
time, without being purely formal,14 and without losing the wealth of possi-
ble metaphysical overtones.15 The interpretation relies on an analysis of the
antithetical structure of the dialogue. But this antithetical structure will not
prevent ontological considerations about degrees of reality and modes of
being from playing a central role in the argument. Much to the contrary, it
is precisely the examination of this structure that leads to the detection of
the contrast between, as well as the contiguity of, the two modes of being
that Plato explores in this dialogue.

THE PROBLEM OF METHOD

Plato opposes Parmenides not only in regard to metaphysics, in a technical
sense, but also, perhaps mainly, in regard to the method and aims of philo-

11. Sophist 241d2–7.

12. As claimed by de Vogel (1936); for a review, see Cherniss (1938).
13. I have proposed this view in Scolnicov (1984) and (1995).
14. As, e.g., Brumbaugh (1961). Note that in the present volume the term ‘Argument’ (cap-
italized) is used to designate each of the eight argumentative sections, and their subsections,
in Part II of the dialogue (improperly called ‘Hypotheses’ since Antiquity). The term ‘argu-
ment’ (lowercase) refers to a complete train of reasoning, of any nature. Similarly, I use the
term ‘Hypothesis’ (capitalized) to designate each of the two main propositions examined in
Part II (each in its turn divided into four Arguments), in accordance with the method that Par-
menides proposes at the end of Part I, viz. ‘The one is’ and ‘The one is not’. The term ‘hypoth-
esis’ (lowercase) refers to any proposition put forth for examination, as per Plato’s method of
hypothesis, explained in the next section.
15. E.g., as developed by Lynch (1959) and other interpreters of Neoplatonic inspiration,
ancient and modern.
4 introduction

sophical argumentation. Such disagreement is not new with Plato, but only
in this dialogue is it brought out in the open in all its depth and breadth.
Parmenides may be said to be the first Cartesian philosopher. He is the
first to tackle the problem of method and to make truth dependent on it.
He does so explicitly: witness his insistence on oJdovˇ, the ‘way’, and on the
path that ‘leads to truth’.16 And he is Cartesian also in the method he favors:
an absolutely certain, undeniable, primordial intuition is attained, and con-
sequences are deduced from it. That fundamental rational intuition takes
absolute priority over common perception, and truth is to be reconstructed
from it according to strict rules of procedure. Even if Parmenides’ method
is not Descartes’s in its details, still, like Descartes, the Eleatic philosopher
reaches his conclusions starting from a premise considered as self-evident
and as taking precedence over any other proposition one could entertain.
The certainty of the conclusions is guaranteed by the certainty of this pri-
mary intuition (and also, of course, by the soundness of the procedure; but,
as we shall see presently, the content of that intuition is intimately bound up
with the method itself ). No conclusion can be more certain than the
premises from which it derives, and nothing is independently certain except
the basic premise.
Parmenides’ intuition is basically formal. As Kurt von Fritz has shown in
his classic article, novoˇ is the faculty of seeing the truth behind appearances.
With Parmenides, novoˇ becomes also intellectual intuition and the reason-
ing faculty.17 This intuition, notwithstanding its far-reaching ontological im-
plications, is primarily concerned with method, with the way to attain truth.
Throughout his poem, Parmenides is enjoined to come to a krivsiˇ, to sep-
arate or to distinguish.18 The first step on the way leading to the truth to
be apprehended by novoˇ is a distinction. There are for novoˇ only two ways
of inquiry: hJ me;n o{pwˇ e[stin [. . .], hJ d j wJˇ ou[k ejstin, ‘the one, that (it) is
[. . .]; the other, that (it) is not’ (fr. 2.3, 5).19 At this stage, there is no need
to go into the vexed question of the meaning of e[stin in this fragment, as
so many interpreters have done. Whatever else may be said about the first
lines of the Way of Truth, at least one thing is immediately clear: what one
part of the sentence affirms, the other denies. The primordial distinction
is between yes and no. For the moment, one could take e[stin as a placeholder
for some predicate —say, A. For novoˇ, then, there are two possibilities and

16. JOdovˇ: frr. 1.2, 5, 27; 2.2; 6.3; 7.2, 3; 8.1, 18. Alhqeiv
j hi ga;r ojphdei¸: fr. 2.4.
17. Von Fritz (1974), building on Snell (1924). For a rather more nuanced picture, see
now Lesher (1981).
18. Cf. fr. 7.5, kri¸nai de; lovgw/; fr. 8.16, kevkritai d j ou\n, etc.
19. It may not be totally superfluous to remark that the pronoun ‘it’ is not in the Greek
and appears in the English translation for purely grammatical reasons; nothing should be made
to hang on it.
 introduction 5

two only: A or not-A. Whatever it is that is being considered must be either

affirmed or else denied.
But Parmenides goes further: ‘(It) is’, he says, ‘and cannot not be [. . .];
and (it) is not, and must needs not be.’ But although the disjunction of the
categorical affirmation and the categorical negation, ‘(it) is’ or ‘(it) is not’,
is exhaustive, this is not so for necessary affirmation and necessary nega-
tion. Not every affirmation and every negation are necessary. For Par-
menides, however, the domain under consideration is solely the rational
domain attainable by novoˇÚ to; ga;r aujto; noei¸n ejstivn te kai; ei\nai, ‘for the
same is for thinking and for being’ (fr. 3).20 And, in this domain, there is
no room for contingency. As in deductive geometry (which was to develop
in the wake of Parmenides himself ),21 all affirmations are necessary, and
all negations likewise.22
Whatever is inconsistent with this primary intuition must be discarded
as false. Hence the main procedure of Parmenides in his poem, namely the
reductio ad absurdum. Parmenides’ truth is what survives elegcoˇ[ , ‘refuta-
tion’.23 This procedure is especially apparent, for example, in the proof of
the impossibility of generation and destruction (fr. 8.5–21). In that same
passage, another element of the Parmenidean method is clearly displayed.
In order to prove the falsity of the premise under consideration, Parmenides
sets up a dichotomy (expressly warranted by the exhaustiveness of the krivsiˇ;
cf. fr. 8.15–16), and on this dichotomy he builds up a dilemma: if h, then
either p or not-p; but p is impossible, and so is not-p; therefore, h must be
false. If there is generation (or destruction), then it is either from (or to)
what is or from (or to) what is not;24 but generation (or destruction) can
be neither from (or to) what is nor from (or to) what is not; therefore, there
is no generation (or destruction). This procedure seems to have been par-
ticularly identified with the Eleatic school. Gorgias parodied it as such in
his On What Is Not; or, On Nature, and Zeno, Parmenides’ follower, devel-
oped it at great length in his book. (And Plato not unadvisedly elaborates
on it at Parmenides 127e1–128a3, immediately at the beginning of the
aporetic Part I of the dialogue.)
As early as the Meno, very early in the development of his mature meta-
physics, Plato opposes to Parmenides’ method his own method of hypothe-

20. On the grammar of this sentence, see Guthrie (1962–81), II 14.

21. Szábó (1969).
22. Cf. Scolnicov (1984), (1995).
23. Cf. Furley (1989). Lesher (1989) understands elegcoˇ
[ in this context as ‘examination’.
24. Strictly, the second disjunct should be “or it is not from what is.” The implicit passage
from “not from what is” to “from what is not” is justified by the joint exhaustiveness and ex-
clusiveness of “what is” and “what is not.” But once the Parmenidean framework is abandoned,
the passage is not unconditionally sound. See below, on 162e3 ff.
6 introduction

sis. Philosophy, he will explicitly claim later, is not deductive, or synthetic,

and cannot rely on starting premises presumed self-evident.25

ELENCHUS
Socrates’ dialectic in the earlier Platonic dialogues no doubt owes much to
Eleatic method, especially as developed by Zeno. (Not only to it, of course;
but this is what interests us in the present context.) It has strict rules, which
have been the subject of much detailed and fruitful investigation.26 Here, I
shall only stress some points that will later prove relevant to our dialogue
too, despite the lateness of its date.27
1. All premises are to be introduced or accepted by the interlocutor. The
aim of the Socratic elenchus is to disabuse the interlocutor of his false
opinions through testing and eventually refuting them. There would be
no point in refuting a position that does not, in some way, have the in-
terlocutor’s agreement. This agreement can be, and very often is, implicit
in, or merely required by, the logic of the general position of Socrates’
partner, even despite his explicit denial.28
2. All moves in the argument must be sanctioned by the interlocutor. In the
trivial case, he must answer to that effect at each and every step. In the
less obvious case, Socrates takes the liberty of making a move to which
the interlocutor should agree if he were consistently to hold to his posi-
tion. Thus, for example, at Meno 96c Socrates thinks himself entitled to
reject the view that virtue is knowledge, on the ground that it has no teach-
ers, because it is Meno’s conception that all knowledge is acquired by ex-
ternal teaching. Thus, too, in the Protagoras, Socrates allows himself the
conversion of “the brave are confident” into “the confident are brave,”
because Protagoras cannot, on his own premises, and despite his protes-
tations, provide a differentia for courage.29
3. As a consequence of the two previous points, Socrates must work within
quite narrow limits. All conclusions are to be reached only on the as-
sumption of the truth of the hypothesis under consideration. Until the
hypothesis and its implications are examined as thoroughly as possible,
no arguments are admitted that are incompatible with it. Plato makes this
requirement explicit as the first step of his method of hypothesis in the

25. Cf. Meno 86e ff.; Republic VI 510d1, wJˇ panti; fanerw¸n, ‘as if evident to all’; and pp. 9–
12 below.
26. Cf., e.g. Robinson (1953), 7–32; Ryle (1966), 110 ff.; Vlastos (1983), 27–58, esp. 39;
et alii.
27. On the date of the Parmenides, see Brisson (1994).
28. E.g., Polus at Gorgias 466e5.
29. Protagoras 350c ff.
 introduction 7

Phaedo.30 Once a proposition is held up for examination, all moves are

conditional on the hypothetical truth of the position being examined and
cannot be detached from it. Moreover, when a concept (say, courage or
virtue) is being examined, it is to be taken, until the hypothesis is
changed, in the sense explicitly or implicitly accepted by the interlocu-
tor. When Socrates sometimes deviates from such a sense, it is because
he maintains that what he says follows from or is implied by the words of
his interlocutor.
4. Considerations external to the position examined are as a rule brought
in only toward the end of the elenchus. These are opinions agreed to be
held by the interlocutor (but not always unconditionally true) that con-
tradict the conclusions reached so far in the examination and clarifica-
tion of the initial premise. In this case, either the initial premise or the
newly introduced accepted opinion has to be abandoned. Obviously, even
if only because of Plato’s literary forethought, it is the initial premise that
is discarded.31
5. There is to the Socratic elenchus an important pragmatic and emotional
component. Callicles, for example, is reduced to anger and to silence
not because he dispassionately realizes that his opinions as stated in con-
versation with Socrates are contradictory, but because he is ashamed to
face up to their logical consequences.32 This element is lacking in the
Eleatic elenchus,33 and in our dialogue it is fittingly not prominent. Yet,
as we shall see, pragmatic contradiction plays a small but crucial role in
Plato’s argumentation. (See on 142a6–8, below.) Young Aristoteles’ char-
acterization in Part II is minimal.34 But the personal element cannot be
completely neutralized: the shift in the conceptual framework is required
only of him who is engaged in the dialectical exchange —unless, like
Philebus or Aristotle’s vegetable of Metaphysics Γ,35 he is content to keep
quiet. The pragmatic impossibility of the aporiae, ‘perplexities’, of Part
I and of Argument I in Part II must be made as generally valid as possi-
ble without disregarding the personal involvement necessary in the di-
alectical situation.36

30. Phaedo 100a, and p. 10, below.

31. Cf., e.g., Meno 95c ff.
32. Gorgias 494e.
33. Cf. Lesher (1989), Scolnicov (1996).
34. Throughout I shall use ‘Aristoteles’ to refer to Parmenides’ respondent in the dialogue
and ‘Aristotle’ as the name of the philosopher. Cf. below, pp. 45, 78.
35. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics Γ 4.1006a15.
36. Miller (1986) has stressed the importance of the personal element but interpreted it
differently.
8 introduction

The Socratic and the Zenonian dialectic are both destructive, in that both
aim at exhibiting the falsity of the position held by the opponent. But there
is between them an important difference, which will be at play in the Par-
menides. Zeno’s dialectic seeks to prove impossibility and to bring the oppo-
nent to abandon his position. Assuming that motion is possible, it must be
either continuous or discrete; but it can be neither; therefore, it is impossi-
ble. If things are many, they can be neither finitely nor infinitely divisible;
therefore, things are not many.37 Socratic dialectic, over and above refuta-
tion, aims at setting up an aporia in order to shock the respondent into a
shift in his conceptual framework—into, say, a totally new understanding of
utility (as in the Apology or the Gorgias) or of knowledge (as in, e.g., the Theaete-
tus).38 The prime example of such conversion is the shift undergone by
Meno’s slave boy: at first he can perceive numbers only as natural—there
can be no number between two and three —but he eventually comes to the
admission of irrational (or incommensurable) magnitudes, such as the ra-
tio of the side of the square to its diagonal (Meno 82b ff.).
On the Eleatic interpretation of aporia, Parmenides’ strategy in Part I
should show that mevqexiˇ is impossible. But on a Socratic-Platonic interpre-
tation, the aporia calls for a change of hypothesis and a complete shift in the
understanding of the concept of being.

APORIA AND EUPORIA

Whether or not Socrates thought that elenchus could bring him to truth
or only to a provisional assumption of consistency, Plato evidently held in
the so-called middle dialogues that elenchus alone is not enough and that
a firmer base has to be sought for knowledge. However, in the typical case
(but not necessarily in all cases), Plato is not intent on deducing conse-
quences from premises taken as evident and constructing from them a meta-
physical system, in the classical manner of, say, Descartes or Spinoza, or, for
that matter, Parmenides. In the typical case (e.g., Phaedo 99d ff.), Plato is
primarily interested in untying aporiae. An aporia (literally, ‘no passage’)
occurs when an objection is raised against an hypothesis under examina-
tion and seems effectively to block that hypothesis. The objections of Sim-
mias and Cebes in the Phaedo are good examples of such moves (84b10–
88b8; cf. 91c7–d9).
The dialectical procedure is, in its general outline, quite simple: the op-
ponent has an opinion or an hypothesis, supposed to solve a given problem.
The aim of the dialectical move is to block the way, to show why the opinion

37. Cf. frr. 28 B 1, 2 DK.

38. Cf. Mittlestrass (1988 [1982]), Scolnicov (1991).
 introduction 9

or the hypothesis will not do. It is not a general proof of impossibility. It is

simply a showing that, on those premises, the problem will not be solved. As
we shall see, this is the procedure in Part I of the Parmenides, where the prob-
lem of the one and the many is shown not to be solved by the concept of
participation under the interpretation assumed there. The aim of the argu-
ment that follows such objections in the postaporetic dialogues is to open a
way, to secure euporia, ‘free passage’. Plato is not seeking a constructive proof
of the desired conclusion; it suffices for him that nothing prevents that con-
clusion from being true under certain agreed assumptions. This is the pro-
cedure also in the Meno (86e ff.), in the Phaedo (98b ff.), in the Republic af-
ter the aporia of Book I, in the Philebus (15a ff.), and elsewhere.39
Plato has two technical formulas (as usual with him, disguised as collo-
quial expressions) for marking aporia and euporia. Often, when an objec-
tion is threatened or announced, the question asking for its deployment is
tiv kwluvei; (‘What prevents?’). The interlocutor assumes his position is
sound, and he wants to know what prevents it from being an acceptable so-
lution to the problem at hand.40 Similarly, when euporia is deemed to have
been attained, it is announced by the expression oujde;n kwluvei (‘Nothing pre-
vents’)—that is, if the proposed solution is accepted, nothing prevents us
from holding on to our position.41
Joseph Owens has shown Aristotle’s euporetical approach and pointed to
its terminological roots in Plato.42 But Aristotle’s debt to Plato seems much
more than terminological: it has to do with what Plato, and Aristotle after
him, considered an adequate solution to a philosophical problem, namely
achieving euporia. Nevertheless, one can surely detect in Plato a trend to-
ward systematization, which comes to full expression in the idea of philoso-
phy as suvnoyiˇ and in the conception of the ajnupovqetoˇ ajrchv, the ‘unhypo-
thetical beginning’, as the beginning of all hypotheses.

THE METHOD OF HYPOTHESIS

In the Meno (86e ff.) and the Phaedo (100a ff.), Plato introduced his new
method of hypothesis. The method, as explained in these dialogues, is anal-
ogous to the geometrical method of analysis, and consists in supposing the
truth of the desired conclusion and then looking for the condition of its possi-
bility. The method does not prove the conclusion. It only shows on what as-

39. Cf. further Scolnicov (1975a), (1975b), (1992b).

40. See, e.g., Charmides 163a5, Euthyphro 9d7, Phaedo 77b6, Theaetetus 208a6.
41. See, e.g., Charmides 162b9, 163a6, 164a1; Euthyphro 9d8; Gorgias 526a2; Theaetetus 158c5,
199d6; Sophist 245a2, oujde;n ajpokwluvei. And cf. Aristotle, Physics VIII 4.255b12.
42. Owens (1963), 214, 215 n. 16. Allen (1983: vii) quotes Owens on aporia and euporia,
but fails to take euporia seriously.
10 introduction

sumption or assumptions the conclusion is possible. It provides eujporiva, ‘free

passage’, by proposing an hypothesis that can withstand forseeable opposition.
The first step in testing the hypothesis is essentially the Socratic elenchus:
what does not agree with the hypothesis is posited as not true; what does
agree, as true. As in the Socratic elenchus, the basic relation is that of ‘dis-
agreement’ (diafwnei¸n): that is, of contradiction between the hypothesis and
the proposition being considered. The relation of agreement is nothing more
than the negation of disagreement: two propositions agree when ‘there is
no impediment’ (oujde;n kwluvei) to affirming them both together.
Such a procedure can give us not the truth, but only the possibility of
truth.43 As Richard Robinson pointed out, the verb tivqhmi, ‘posit’, is used by
Plato in these contexts to designate the holding of some belief in a “provi-
sional and tentative” manner.44 Thus, what agrees with the hypothesis is
“posited” provisionally as true; what does not, as false (Phaedo 100a).
The second step of the method of hypothesis has to do with the hypoth-
esis itself. Here too, the method gives us a tool for disproving hypotheses.
Hypotheses entailing consequences that contradict them, or each other, or
other propositions ‘worthy of acceptance’ (Phaedo 92d7) have been dis-
carded. Other hypotheses will stand not because they are true but because
they have not been disproved. Lack of disproof, however, is clearly not suf-
ficient. The transition from a given opinion to its supporting hypothesis is
no more than the transition from one opinion to another. Yet Plato says ex-
plicitly that progress from opinion to knowledge is to be achieved ‘in the
same manner’ (wJsauvtwˇ): by laying down yet another hypothesis (101d7).
The somewhat surprising upshot of the second part of the method of hy-
pothesis is that the logos given is itself an opinion, and is tested only for lack
of disproof.
Nevertheless, the chain of hypotheses proceeds “upward.” That is to say,
the direction of the development of the chain of logoi is from the ontolog-
ically posterior to the ontologically prior. For Plato, dropping the claim to
validity is tantamount to obliterating his basic distinctions, first drawn in the
Meno and never since abandoned, between true and false opinion and be-
tween (true) opinion and knowledge. Without it, concepts like ‘giving a lo-
gos’ or ‘higher hypothesis’ are deflated of their meaning. But the claim to
validity is met only at the end of the hypothetical chain: ‘until you reach some-
thing sufficient’ (Phaedo 101d8). In the Phaedo, this ‘something sufficient’ is
only psychological and contextual, ad hominem, and its validity is merely sub-
jective. But, as Socrates remarks at 107b5 on ‘the first hypotheses’, subjec-
tive validity is not sufficient as a foundation of knowledge: hence the demand

43. Cf. above, p. 8.

44. Robinson (1953), 94.
 introduction 11

in the Republic for an unhypothetical principle. But we shall not follow this
line here.45
Plato’s method of hypothesis is more than an argumentative tool. Implied
in it is a fundamental change in the conception of the task of philosophy and
of what counts as a valid philosophical argument. Philosophy does not prove
from first principles. Rather, it starts from convictions accepted beforehand
(in particular the conviction that there is a real difference between truth and
falsehood) and establishes the principles that support these convictions.
In proper philosophical argumentation, the ‘principles’ (ajrcaiv ) come not
in the beginning but in the end. Philosophy always starts in medias res. Via
hypotheses, euporia leads to the ajrcaiv, and eventually to the ajnupovqetoˇ ajrchv.
Philosophical argumentation moves not, as with Parmenides, from the ajrcaiv
but to the ajrcaiv.46 This point is forcefully made in the Divided Line (Repub-
lic VI 510b4–9): philosophy is not mathematics, since it has its own distinc-
tive nondeductive method.47 Until the unhypothetical principle is attained,
the progress from one step to the next runs counter to deduction, and the
conclusions are more certain than the hypotheses devised to support them.
The ‘strength’ of the hypothesis (cf. Phaedo 100e4, ejrrwmenevstaton) is, in
fact, judged by reference to its contribution to the solution of the problem
at hand. Until the hypotheses are “removed” by being supported by still
higher hypotheses, they draw all their justification from their claim to sup-
port the desired conclusion. This is why Plato considers himself entitled to
draw his hypotheses from poets, myths, “dreams,” unexplained intuitions,
or whatever else comes to hand.
An important feature of the dialectical method is that no conclusion can
be detached from its premises. Plato quite often stresses this dependence of
the conclusions on their premises by repeating the protasis with the emphatic
ei[per or ejpeivper, ‘if indeed’. This is particularly noticeable in the Parmenides.48
It emerges from such considerations that one of the functions of the
ajnupovqetoˇ ajrchv is to guarantee that conclusions can be detached from their
premises. Those propositions that were asserted only hypothetically on the
way up, to the ajrchv, can be asserted apodictically on the way down, from the
ajrchv. As we shall see in the analysis of the Arguments in the Parmenides, the
‘one’ in Argument VIII will fulfill a structurally similar role (although it
should not, therefore, be simply equated with the ajrchv of the Republic).
Plato gives the name uJpovqesiˇ to only one of the premises that conjointly
entail the conclusion, and sometimes even looks for only one of these

45. I have done this in Scolnicov (1975a).

46. Cf. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics I 3.1095c32.
47. Cf. also Plato’s criticism of mathematics at Republic VII 533c3–5.
48. [Eiper: see, e.g., 138a8, d8; 146b2, c6; 152a3, 5; etc. ’Epeivper: see, e.g., 148d2, 149d4,
157b9, 159a8, 162b3, 163d8.
12 introduction

premises, presumably the one that in his eyes is the most important or the
most controversial. Plato is not looking for the set of propositions whose con-
junction is sufficient to entail the conclusion. He is interested in the main
premise (called also aijtiva, the ‘reason’ or the ‘cause’), which, in conjunc-
tion with the set of standing assumptions, entails the desired conclusion. The
uJpovqesiˇ is not a sufficient condition. While it is being examined, all other
assumptions are kept undisputed. (So, e.g., in the Meno.) Sometimes, as in
the Meno, Plato specifies these assumptions; sometimes he does not, as in
the Republic.49
An examination of the textual evidence shows that the term uJpovqesiˇ and
its cognates are used by Plato indifferently of propositions or states of affairs
(Meno 87a2, d2–3; Republic IV 437a6; perhaps also Phaedo 107b5), or of sin-
gle terms or things (Republic VI 510c3–5; cf. Theaetetus 191c8–9), without
paying attention to the distinction between formal and material uses (Re-
public VII 533c8).50

TWO PRINCIPLES OF NONCONTRADICTION

At Republic IV 436b8–c1, Plato formulates what is usually thought to be his
version of the Principle of Noncontradiction:
It is clear that the same thing will not consent [oujk ejqelhvsei] simultaneously to
do or suffer opposites—at any rate not in the same respect and51 in relation
to the same thing.

Then, surprisingly, after defending his Principle with a couple of exam-

ples, Plato adds (437a4–9) that, in order not to be forced to deal with all
possible objections, we shall go forth
hypothesizing that this is the case and agreeing that, should things ever seem to us
otherwise, all the consequences of this [assumption] will be untied.

But what could count as a counterexample to the Principle of Noncontra-

diction? Is not the Principle necessarily immune to counterexamples, since
it is itself the criterion of counterexamples? Would not Aristotle call it ‘the
most certain of all principles’?52 Plato, however, is not introducing his Prin-
ciple of Noncontradiction as a general ontological or epistemological prin-

49. On uJpovqesiˇ in Plato, see Scolnicov (1973); on the general significance of the method
of analysis in Greek mathematics, see Hintikka and Remes (1974).
50. The nonpropositional use of uJpovqesiˇ survives in Aristotle, especially in political, phys-
ical, or metaphysical, as distinct from logical, contexts. Cf. Bonitz (1955 [1870]), s.v.
51. Kaiv should be understood here as introducing an alternative expression. On the equiv-
alence of katav and provˇ in such contexts, see below, commentary on 136a6, p. 77 n. 27.
52. Metaphysics Γ 3.1005b17.
 introduction 13

ciple; he is putting it forward as an hypothesis from which conclusions are to

be derived, for as long as the hypothesis stands. But how can the Principle
of Noncontradiction be an hypothesis? How could things ‘ever seem to us
otherwise’?
A first step toward a better understanding of Plato’s formulation is to
note that he has two distinct Principles of Noncontradiction. One is that just
quoted from Republic IV. The other Principle is implicit in remarks such as
(Phaedo 74c1–3; cf. 103b4–5):
What, then? Did the equals themselves ever appear to you unequal, or equal-
ity inequality?
—Never ever, Socrates.

Two differences between these two Principles are immediately obvious: first,
the Phaedo’s version mentions nothing like subject and predicate, no ‘a is
not b and not-b’; second, there are no restrictions of time or respect in this
version.53 I shall call the Phaedo’s version the absolute Principle of Noncon-
tradiction, and the Republic’s I shall call the restricted, or weakened Principle.
This absolute Principle is the historical Parmenides’ Principle of Non-
contradiction (fr. 7.1):54
For this shall never be forced, that what are not should be.

The Parmenidean (absolute) Principle states simply that it is impossible

for A to be not-A, with no allowance for restrictions of time, aspects, or relations.
The consequences of this Principle were drawn by Parmenides himself
and developed at great length by Zeno.55 Zeno showed again that sensible
things do not conform to the Parmenidean, absolute Principle of Non-
contradiction.56 If the many are, they are like and unlike, finite and infi-
nite, and so on, in forty different arguments. But pointing out to him that
the many are differently predicated in different respects would be sheer ig-

53. It is easy to see that the first is a consequence of the second. Cf. below, on Theorem
II.1, p. 97.
54. In a monograph by now almost forgotten, Svend Ranulf (1924) stressed the Vieldeutigkeit,
or ‘ambiguity’, of concepts. I prefer to stress the restrictions to the Principle of Noncontradic-
tion. This seems to me to square better with the actual texts of Parmenides and of Plato. The
problem of contradiction in Plato has also been stressed by Hoffmann (1923).
55. Cf., e.g., 29 B 2 DK = Simplicius, In Physica 139.5; and Parmenides 127e. The interpre-
tations of Zeno’s paradoxes are controversial. Cf., e.g., H. D. P. Lee (1936), Salmon (1970),
Fränkel (1975 [1942]), and Vlastos (1975 [1959]).
56. I shall be using the terms ‘sensible things’, ‘sensibles’, and the like, rather than ‘par-
ticulars’, in order to avoid the implicit contrast to ‘universals’. By these terms I mean, like Wa-
terlow (1982: 339 n. 1), objects of the senses, such as Socrates and this white color, as well as
characteristics of individuals, like Socrates’ wisdom, which although not properly apprehended
by the senses can be said to be immediately given within an empirical context.
14 introduction

noratio elenchi: the whole point of the absolute Principle of Noncontradic-

tion is that A cannot be not-A—without any restrictions. No restrictions to the
Principle of Noncontradiction can be derived from reason alone, and thus,
sub specie rationis, within the wholly necessary, rational domain,57 any re-
strictions of time or aspects are totally unfounded.58 Indeed, in the Par-
menides (129a6 ff.) Socrates remarks not that Zeno’s showing that sensible
things do not conform to the Principle of Noncontradiction is wrong, but
that it is trivial (since the problem was, at least hypothetically, dealt with al-
ready in the Republic).59
Plato is fully committed to the unrestricted (or absolute) Principle of Non-
contradiction,60 and he sees, with Parmenides and Zeno, that sensible things
do not conform to it. But Plato does not dismiss the sensible world as a do-
main in which there is no truth and no reality. Forms do comply with the
absolute Principle,61 and they are, therefore, fully real. But if, in line with
the method of hypothesis, we should want to ascribe some degree of reality
to the sensible world, we must posit the possibility of restricting the Princi-
ple of Noncontradiction, so as to allow some reality to entities that do not
conform to the absolute Principle.
A first list of aspects or respects according to which the Principle of Non-
contradiction can be weakened or restricted is given, for example, at Sym-
posium 211a1–5 and elsewhere. Sensible things are ‘deficient’ (ejndeevstera),
as the Phaedo (75b2) has it, because they do not conform to the absolute
Principle of Noncontradiction as the criterion of reality. But they are not to-
tally unreal, because they admit of contradictions only within certain bounds.
The procedure is patently hypothetical. The (qualified, or restricted) real-
ity of sensible things is accepted. The condition of this acceptance is that re-
strictions can be put on the Principle of Noncontradiction. The conclusion—
that sensible things have some reality—has a higher degree of certainty (or,
rather, of acceptability) than the hypothesis that supports it.
It should be noted that the restricted Principle was introduced in Republic
IV (436b8–c1) expressly in order to allow a measure of unity and reality62 to
a nonideal entity—namely the soul, and more specifically, the soul incarnate,

57. Cf. above, p. 5.

58. I have followed some of the consequences of the absolute Principle of Noncontradic-
tion in Scolnicov (1983).
59. A nice chronological conflation, or double focus, of the type Plato was not averse to:
the dialogue reported in the Parmenides is supposed to have taken place before the Phaedo and
the Republic, but it presupposes familiarity with their contents.
60. Note Simmias’s emphatic response at Phaedo 74c3, quoted above, p. 13.
61. This position is only a first approximation, and will be modified in the Parmenides; cf.
below, pp. 33–34, and Argument II. But see also Argument VIII.
62. To be one is to be something and to be real. Cf. below, p. 15.
 introduction 15

subject to divisions and contradictions. This Principle is applicable to the soul

insofar as it is linked to the sensible world. In the Phaedo (103a4 ff.), answer-
ing a possible query (the objector is, significantly enough, unnamed), Plato
carefully distinguishes between the restricted Principle, which applies to sen-
sible things (74b ff.: sensible things appear equal in one respect but not in
another, etc.), and the absolute Principle, to which conforms what is in itself
(103b4–5: ‘the opposite itself would never become its own opposite’).63
Plato’s two Principles serve him thus to distinguish between two types of
entities with different degrees of reality: those that (at least as a first ap-
proximation) conform to the unrestricted (absolute) Principle of Noncon-
tradiction and are, therefore, fully real, and those that do not. Nevertheless,
the latter still have some measure of reality, insofar as they are not absolutely
self-contradictory: they can suffer contradictions, provided these are ‘in dif-
ferent respects and not simultaneously’.64
The restricted Principle is considered by Plato an hypothesis because he
presents it as the main necessary condition of the possibility of sensible things
as imperfectly real. But, in itself, it is not necessary, as indeed it is not nec-
essary that there should be sensible things.65 Should we ever have reasons
to abandon this version of the Principle, all that depends on it will have to
be reconsidered. But note that the Parmenidean Principle is not similarly
endangered; nor are the forms, insofar as they are real unities.66
As becomes clear from the analysis of the Principle of Noncontradiction,
any consideration of what cannot be is inextricably linked with a considera-
tion of what is. G. E. L. Owen called this, in the context of the Sophist, Plato’s
Parity Assumption: “The hope offered by the Eleatic Stranger [in Sophist
250e5–251a1] is that any light thrown on either being or not-being will
equally illuminate the other.”67 As we just saw, this assumption is not new
with the Sophist. In the Parmenides, it will be especially prominent.
The Principle of Noncontradiction is the criterion of what it is to be one
thing, hence of what it is to be something and of what it is to be.68 Thus, as in
the Parmenides, the inquiry about the one and the many is ipso facto also an
inquiry into being and not being. In Parmenides’ hypothesis, ‘one’ is to be

63. On the supposed distinction between being F and having F, see below, p. 20.
64. Cf. also Sophist 249b8. Aristotle, by contrast, has no use for degrees of reality. There-
fore, he has only one Principle of Noncontradiction (which he emphatically maintains is not
an hypothesis). Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics Γ 3.
65. Cf. Phaedo 100c4–5: ‘if anything else is beautiful besides the beautiful itself [. . .]’.
66. I beg to reserve judgment on the status of the forms in the Parmenides until it is con-
sidered below, pp. 18–22.
67. Owen (1970), 248.
68. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics Γ 2.1003b22 ff.
16 introduction

understood as anything that can be taken as a unity, anything that can be

identified as something (before we give it a name, or ascribe to it a de-
scription). In particular, the question is not so far prejudged of what can be
taken as a unity: forms, sensible things, all the forms taken together, and
so on.69 This is precisely what the dialogue investigates. ‘One’ is to be taken
as a most general term. In most contexts in this dialogue, it is perhaps best
understood as a placeholder, as x, marking something analogous to the sub-
ject of a predication.70
Logic turns out not to be ontologically neutral. By Owen’s Parity As-
sumption, the positive counterpart of the Parmenidean Principle of Non-
contradiction is the Parmenidean interpretation of being: being admits of
no aspects or restrictions. The counterpart of the restricted Principle of Non-
contradiction is, as we shall see, participation. In the Phaedo and the Repub-
lic, Plato assumed that this distinction between the Parmenidean and the re-
stricted Principle establishes the distinction between forms and sensible
things, at least as a first approximation. Whether Plato recognized partici-
pation of forms in other forms (in such passages as Phaedo 102d ff., or Re-
public 476a) will, in this context, remain an open question, since it does not
directly affect our present concerns. In any case, in the Parmenides, as we shall
see, the distinction between forms and sensible things is drawn within par-
ticipation itself. (Cf. below, Theorem II.10, Appendix.)

THE VERB ‘TO BE’

Plato does not have a technical existential use of the verb ‘be’. This was sug-
gested already in 1952 by Étienne Gilson and has been increasingly accepted
by scholars—among them Gregory Vlastos, John Malcolm, Michael Frede,
G. E. L. Owen, and Mohan Matthen,71 to cite only a few. Charles Kahn gave
a good statement of the general position:72
. . . if by a word for existence one means simply an expression which we would
normally render into English by ‘there is’, then it is clear that the Greek verb
esti often has this sense. But if we understand the phrase ‘there is’ as repre-
senting a univocal concept of existence for a subject of predication, as dis-
tinct from the content of the predication itself—as distinct from the ‘essence’
of the subject or the kind of thing it is (as we often do, for example, when we
read the existential quantifier ‘(Ex)’ as ‘there is something of which the fol-
lowing is true’)—if this generalized positing of a subject as ‘real’ is what we

69. Cf. McCabe (1996), 24.

70. But see below, p. 19, and on Theorem II.2.1, p. 99.
71. Vlastos (1965a), Malcolm (1967), Frede (1967), Owen (1970), Matthen (1983).
72. Kahn (1978), 33. Cf. also Calogero (1932), Mourelatos (1970), Nehamas (1979), Kahn
(1981), Matthen (1983), Curd (1988).
 introduction 17

mean by existence, then I would be inclined to deny that such a notion can
be taken for granted as a basis for understanding the meaning of the Greek
verb.

The interpretations of the Parmenides (and of Plato, in general) that rely

primarily on an existential understanding of ei\nai run into unnecessary trou-
ble. Thus, for example, F. M. Cornford and Reginald Allen (and many oth-
ers) are ultimately reduced to seeing in the Parmenides nothing but an
aporetic exercise, the point of which is difficult to grasp. Cornford’s diffi-
culties are made worse in his interpretation of Argument V. (See below, ad
locum.) Plato himself (at 142e3 ff.) gives some of his reasons for not postu-
lating a bare subject of predication.73 True, the existential sense is never far
away; but as will become clear from a detailed examination of the dialogue,
it is never made to carry the burden of the argument.
For Plato—as generally for the Greek speaker of his time —it was possi-
ble to understand the verb ‘to be’ as incomplete, as ‘to be (F )’. This is clear,
for example, from Republic V 478e, where ‘being’ and ‘not being’ are ex-
changed in the continuation of the passage for definite attributes such as
beautiful and ugly, just and unjust. Thus, in many contexts, ‘x is’ has to be
understood as ‘x is (F )’—that is, as signifying that x is of a certain character,
specified by the context or not. In particular in the Parmenides, as we shall
see, e}n ejstin has to be understood, in the appropriate contexts, as ‘the one
is (F )’—that is, the one (or x, as we have just interpreted the term above)
has any certain character whatsoever. And, accordingly, e}n o[n should be un-
derstood as ‘the one that is (such-and-such)’. Oujsiva (‘being’), then, will be
the corresponding abstract noun, referring to any specified or unspecified
characteristic being considered.
In this dialogue, the inquiry into e{n is primarily an inquiry into what it is
to be some one thing. In the same way, the inquiry into e[stin is primarily an
inquiry into what it is to be F or to be a certain F.74 Cornford was right in see-
ing in the Parmenides an examination of the concept ‘one’ and in stressing
the play on the ambiguity of e[stin.75 But in understanding e[stin existentially
and obscuring the antithetical structure of the dialogue, he was bound to
miss its main thrust.

73. See below, pp. 99–100.

74. Cf. Kahn (1978), 40: “ What must reality be like if predications like ‘X is Y ’ are to be
possible, and sometimes true? What will X be like? What will Y be like? And how can the two
be related to one another?”
75. Cornford (1939), 109–15. Cf. McCabe (1996). As we shall see immediately below, there
is no strict ambiguity of ‘is’. For Plato, there are no two different senses of ‘is’—one, say, for
identity, and another for predication. Rather, the (putative) relation between the two terms of
‘A is B’ is the same in both cases, except that in the one it is strict, or absolute, and in the other
it is restricted, or qualified.
18 introduction

PARMENIDEAN BEING AND PLATONIC BEING

Parmenidean76 being is the ontological correlate of the bare affirmation of
a content. At the end of the road leading to truth—along which all predi-
cations are negated—what is is acknowledged not to be generated or de-
structed, not to move, to be unharmed and not imperfect.77 E [ sti is all that
can be said, if that much. All the rest are nothing but names that mortals
use, believing them to give us valid information about the world (fr. 8.38–
39).78 As the Parmenides will make clear, Parmenidean ascription of being is
“transparent.” As Plato shows in Argument I, nothing is added to the Par-
menidean one when it is said to be. To say ‘the one’ and to say ‘the one is’
is to say the same thing.79 The analysis of Argument I will show that it is not
the existence of the one that is in question but its being of a certain char-
acter or of any character.
Parmenidean being should be distinguished from logical identity. Logi-
cal identity (of the Leibnizian type) is the relation that obtains between a
and b when a and b are (1) indiscernible, or (2) their names are substitutable
for each other salva veritate, or (3) both. In particular, Leibnizian identity
bears no existential overtones. By contrast, Parmenidean being corresponds
to the absolute affirmation of a, where nothing else can be said, for a ex-
hausts all the universe of discourse. In fact, as in Argument I, even the af-
firmation of a as a definite entity is precluded by the Parmenidean concept
of being. Such affirmation would presuppose the (possible) existence of a
b, whose difference from a is being negated. But in the Parmenidean uni-
verse of being and of true thinking (cf. fr. 3) there is nothing else that can be
considered alongside a. Existence is no doubt implied in the Parmenidean
concept of being, but Parmenidean being is not identical with it.80
In the Phaedo and the Republic, Plato was concerned primarily with the
problem of the relation between the one form and the many sensible things
that bear its name. This is also how the question is presented in the aporetic
Part I of the Parmenides. But Plato’s Parmenides immediately points out, in
expounding his method, that the real problem lies in the relation between

76. Unless otherwise stated or evident from the context, I shall be referring to Parmenides
as understood by Plato. When necessary, I shall distinguish Plato’s Parmenides from the histori-
cal Parmenides. In the analysis of the dialogue and in the commentary, the name without a
qualifier will refer to the dramatic character.
77. Reading oujd j ajtevleston at fr. 8.4.
78. Reading o[noma e[stai. Cf. Mourelatos (1970), 180–85.
79. Note that, for Parmenides, there can be no difference between a term and a proposi-
tion, or between an object and a state of affairs. This distinction will not be explicitly made un-
til Plato’s Sophist 259e.
80. Cf. Matthen (1983). See also Mourelatos (1970); Schofield, in Kirk, Raven and Schofield
(1983); and Curd (1991).
 introduction 19

any ‘one’ and any ‘many’. In order to solve the problem of the relation of
forms to sensible things, Plato has first to overcome two Parmenidean tenets
that prevent any talk of participation or the like. He has to show how a ra-
tional plurality is possible and how true internal relations are possible be-
tween members of such a plurality. Only after euporia has been secured in
these most general terms can Plato go into the details of his doctrine of forms,
and of participation of forms in forms, and of sensible things in forms.
At this point, a word of warning is in order. Strictly speaking, Platonic par-
ticipation is not to be understood in terms of (Aristotelean) predication (al-
though sometimes I shall be using the word ‘predication’ for the sake of con-
venience). The relation is not the one that obtains between universals and
particulars. Moreover, the relation between forms and sensible things will
turn out to be a further specification of the relation between forms. ‘Predi-
cation’ is something of a misnomer. Mevqexiˇ, ‘participation’, is not e}n ejpi; (or
kata;) pollw¸n, ‘one over many’. (Cf. below, on 131b6.) The relation between
sensible things and forms is not (1) subsumption, in the sense that yellow
things “fall under” the general concept of yellow. Nor is it (2) predication,
in the sense that ‘yellow’ is ‘said of’ (levgetai: Aristotle, Metaphysics ∆ 7) or
‘belongs to’(uJpavrcei) yellow things. Nor is it (3) instantiation, in the sense
that any given pair is an example of ‘the pair’; if ‘the circle itself’, or, say,
‘what it is to be a circle’,81 does not have a circular shape, then the sensible
circle cannot be an instantiation of it. (See below, p. 21, on self-predication.)
Finally, it is not even (4) imperfect instantiation: a sensible pair is a pair, nei-
ther more nor less than two items. Sensible things are what they are in a dif-
ferent mode of being. They do not instantiate the form, in the same sense that
a picture does not instantiate its original. It represents it in another medium.
As becomes clear from the Timaeus, there is ultimately no individual subject
of predication, but all forms are ultimately predicated of ‘place’ (cwvra).
In the Parmenides, Plato is not distinguishing between two distinct senses
of ‘is’. He is distinguishing between two modes of being. If all we had were
an ambiguity between two distinct senses of ‘is’, then the aporia of the mas-
ter and the slave (133d7 ff.) would stand. We would have two types of enti-
ties or realities, being1 and being2, and any relation between them, on the
assumptions of that argument, would still be impossible.
The difference between modes of being and types of entities is crucial
for understanding the Parmenides. Distinctions between types of entities are
classifications, such as those in animate and inanimate, fire and night (as

81. Cf. Nehamas (1979), 93. Nehamas’s formulation is not quite adequate, but it will do
for our immediate purpose. ‘F is F ’ is tautologically evident, and it is accepted as such by Socrates’
interlocutors; ‘F is what it is to be F ’ is not. For a critique of Nehamas’s interpretation, see Mal-
colm (1991).
20 introduction

in Parmenides, fr. 8.56–59), universals and particulars. Types are, in Par-

menidean terminology, ‘separate’ or ‘apart’ from each other (cwri;ˇ ajl-
lhvlwn, fr. 8.56): if something is of one type, it is not of another. By contrast,
something could be, in itself, blobs of paint on a piece of cloth or wood,
but in relation to Simmias, it could be a portrait of him. Being a portrait is
a relational (provˇ ti) characterization; every portrait or image is a portrait
or image of someone. To be an image of something is to be in a parasitical
way, or mode. Note that what is parasitical is not necessarily its existence, but
its being an image. Any of the presumed statues of Socrates exists in its own
right as a piece of marble; what is dependent on Socrates is its being his
(presumed or intended) representation: it is meant to represent him, well
or badly.
Furthermore, modes of being should not be confused with degrees of re-
ality. A ghost has presumably a lesser degree of reality than a man: it cannot
be touched; it disappears at the crow of the cock; and so forth. It lacks cer-
tain of the characteristics that we assume to establish reality. If the ghost is
also that of Hamlet’s father, then its mode of being, so Plato would say, is
such as to be dependent on Hamlet’s father. In a sense, it is Hamlet’s father,
albeit only derivatively. If all ghosts must be of someone or other, not only
are they less real but also their mode of being is derivative. But this is not al-
ways the case. Any personage of fiction is supposed to be less real than its
author, but it is not dependent on him in the same way that an image is de-
pendent on its original.
Plato interprets having F (or being f, or being an F ) as a lower degree of
being F. ‘To be F ’ is systematically ambiguous between ‘to be F ’ (in the full
sense) and ‘to be f ’—that is, ‘to be F derivatively or eponymously’. In the
Phaedo (102 ff.), Plato analyzed predication as being in a qualified way. He
separated the subject from its attributes and distinguished between those
statements “that ascribe a character to a subject and those that identify the
designate of linguistic subject and predicate,” 82 and he maintained that hav-
ing F is no different from being F, except for the accompanying qualifica-
tions or restrictions. The large itself is large, but in a way different from how
Simmias is large. Largeness in Simmias, however, is the same as largeness it-
self; but in Simmias it appears as corporeal, temporal, relative, whereas large-
ness itself is none of these. The difference between largeness in nature (or
largeness itself ) and largeness ‘in us’ (ejn hJmi¸n: cf., e.g., Phaedo 103b5) is not
in the presumed different senses of ‘large’ but in the different ways, or modes,
in which forms and sensibles are large —much the same as, say, Simmias and
the number 10,000 are large in different ways. And since Simmias is large
only in a certain way and not in some other, his largeness is deficient, has a

82. Stough (1976), 24. See also Nehamas (1979).

 introduction 21

lesser degree of reality than largeness itself, which is not restricted or qual-
ified in any way.
But degrees of reality do not necessarily entail self-predication.83 That the
beautiful itself is beautiful is self-evident. Here, the grammatical predicate
identifies the grammatical subject. That Alcibiades is beautiful needs to be
explained by the presence of the beautiful in Alcibiades. There is no need,
however, for ‘immanent characters’.84 Alcibiades is beautiful, and the beau-
tiful itself is beautiful; but the two cases are not the same: Alcibiades has
beauty, or rather beauty is in Alcibiades, but neither is true of beauty itself.
Hence, beauty can be said (somewhat inappropriately) to be predicated of
Alcibiades, but not of the beautiful itself.85
A third Parmenidean claim that Plato has to counter in order to clear the
way for his doctrine of participation is that, for Parmenides, there is only
one mode of being, namely being kaq j auJtov, ‘in itself’ (or more exactly, ‘in
relation to itself’). The historical Parmenides himself had laid great stress
on this (fr. 8.29). Even when he was ready to envisage a (deceitful) plurality
of entities, in the Way of Seeming, he emphatically specified that they are
each kaq j auJtov (fr. 8.58).
In the Phaedo, Plato distinguished between ‘two types of entities’ (79a6,
duvo ei[dh tw¸n o[ntwn): intelligible and immutable as against sensible and
changeable. For this he could claim some Parmenidean authority. But he
went further and postulated also two modes of being. Sensible things are
what they are because they participate in or imitate other entities, which are
what they are in themselves. The beautiful itself is beautiful in and by itself;
other beautiful things are beautiful because they stand in a certain relation
to the beautiful itself, and only in certain respects but not in others (Phaedo
100b5–101b8). Sensible things can be only provˇ ti, ‘in relation to some-
thing’, never kaq j auJtav, ‘in themselves’. Being provˇ ti, they are dependent,
and this is why they are deficient: they can be differently predicated only provˇ,
or katav, different aspects, and they are never capable of being what they are
in their own right.
This is spelled out in the formulation of the restricted Principle of Non-
contradiction. Entities that conform to the restricted Principle are what they
are only in relation to this or that. The sensible beautiful thing is beautiful
only in relation to this or that observer, or in relation to this or that aspect,
and so on. Thus, Plato’s two Principles of Noncontradiction implicitly de-
fine two modes of being: the absolute Principle defines what it is to be in it-
self (this had already been done by the historical Parmenides, as we saw

83. As Penner (1987: 142) maintains.

84. As Stough (1976: 23) has shown.
85. See further p. 60, below.
22 introduction

above), and the restricted Principle defines what it is to be provˇ ti, ‘in rela-
tion to something’, or pro;ˇ a[lla, ‘in relation to other things’.86
Philolaus had already contrasted entities that are poq j auJtav and those
that are pro;ˇ a[llo.87 It seems, however, that he did not provide a justifica-
tion for this distinction, nor either an analysis of what it is to be pro;ˇ a[llo
(or, in Plato’s terminology, of what the hypotheses are of such a distinction).
This is what Part II of the Parmenides sets out to do. Plato had already picked
up the distinction earlier—for example, in the Charmides (168b ff.), in the
Republic (438a), and elsewhere. There it was used, probably following Philo-
laus, of different types of entities. In the Parmenides and in the dialogues that
follow it, the distinction between kaq j auJtov and pro;ˇ a[llo comes to be used
to differentiate between modes of being. (Cf. Sophist 255c13, Philebus 51c.)

THE DIALOGUE
The Parmenides divides neatly and notoriously into a short proem and two
unequal parts. (On the proem, see below, ad locum.) That Part I of the main
dialogue is aporetic, there is no doubt. The overall plan of the dialogue is
much the same as that of the Meno and the Republic: a relatively short aporetic
first part, the bulk of the dialogue dealing with overcoming the initial apo-
ria. (One could perhaps take this scheme further and imagine the Theaete-
tus as the aporetic introduction to the projected trilogy Sophist-Statesman-
Philosopher. 88)

Part I
The aporia in Part I of the Parmenides is set up in true Eleatic fashion. The
problem is the relation of the one to the many, and it is this problem—or a
variety of it—that the doctrine of forms was meant to solve. The relation of
the one to the many is expressed as a rule by e[sti, ‘is’, be it the relation of
Socrates to his many predicates or that of the large itself to the many large
things. Parmenides confronts Socrates with an Eleatic dilemma aimed at
blocking the doctrine of forms as a solution to the problem at hand: either

86. Cf. Curd (1988), 309: “So we have two sorts of ‘is’ here: the strong ‘is’ that marks the
real, essential being of Forms, and the weak ‘is’ that marks the derivative being of particulars.”
Meinwald (1991) identifies in the Parmenides what she takes to be “two kinds of predication,”
thus interpreting the distinction in too Aristotelean a fashion.
87. Fr. 44 B 11 DK. Potiv (Doric for provˇ) is a variant of katav. On Philolaus, cf. Huffman
(1993).
88. Diès (1923: xii) sees the Parmenides as the first dialogue of a tetralogy, followed by Theaete-
tus, Sophist, and Statesman. Cf. also Migliori (1990), 54. The chronological relation between the
Theaetetus and the Parmenides is uncertain.
 introduction 23

we accept a single-world, homogeneous ontology, in which forms and sen-

sible things are said to be of the same ontological type (i.e., have the same
ontological characteristics), or else we accept a split-world, heterogeneous
ontology, in which forms and sensible things belong to different ontologi-
cal types and, accordingly, have different ontological characteristics (e.g., sin-
gle location vs. multiple location, materiality vs. immateriality, or whatever—
the exact characteristics turn out to be irrelevant to the present discussion).
This is a clean dichotomy: either the first or the second. If the first, then
either forms are ontologically similar to sensible things, or else sensible things
are like forms. If forms are like sensible things, then sensible things partici-
pate either in the whole of the form or else in only a part of it. But they could
not participate in the whole, for the form, being homogeneous with sensible
things, cannot be in many places at once. Socrates’ suggestion that the form
is like the day, which can be in many places at once without ceasing to be one
and the same, is rightly ignored by Parmenides, since it is not consistent with
the current implicit hypothesis, from which Parmenides is arguing in this
section, that forms and sensible things are of the same ontological type. But,
on this assumption, neither can sensible things participate in a part of the
form. The large sensible thing cannot participate only in a part of the large
itself, for that part, being sensible-like, would be smaller than the whole. Self-
predication—the assumption that forms are F in the same way that sensibles
are F —arises as a consequence of the assimilation of forms to sensible things.
Along a parallel line, still assuming a single-world ontology, either the form
is epistemically posterior to sensible things—that is, our awareness of the
form arises from our consideration of sensible things—or else it is prior to
them. If the first, seeing that we are committed to self-predication as our cur-
rent ontological presupposition, then the Third Man Argument: large sen-
sible things are large by another large, different from them; but this new
large, on the assumption of an homogeneous ontology, must be large by
virtue of yet another large, different from it; and so on. Socrates again re-
torts out of order: the forms are nonmaterial thoughts in the soul. Parmen-
ides, rightly again, will have none of it: either thoughts are of an indepen-
dent reality (and then we are back to the previous difficulties), or else, if
thoughts are themselves independently real, the best we can do, on our current
assumption, is to assimilate sensible things to the form, instead of going the
other way round as we have been doing up to this point. If the second—if
forms are prior to sensible things, being paradigms in nature —then we must
interpret the relation between paradigm and copy as symmetrical in the rel-
evant respect, in order to remain within our assumed single-world, homo-
geneous ontology.
If we take the second horn of the main dilemma, then we commit our-
selves to the total heterogeneity of sensible things and forms, entailing an un-
bridgeable gap between ourselves and the forms, or, for that matter, between
 One and many

single-world split-world
ontology ontology

total partial ideas posterior ideas prior to

participation participation to sensible things sensible things

(heterogeneous homogeneous homogeneous (heterogeneous

ontology) ontology ontology ontology)

Counter- Objection Objection Counter- Objections

hypothesis hypothesis

I.1.1: I.1.2: I.2: I (bis).1.1: I(bis).1.2: I(bis).2: II.1.1–4:

The day The sail Self-predication The Third Man Thoughts Paradigms Total separation
(131b3–6) (131b7–c11) (131c12–e2) (131e8–132b2) (132b3–c11) (132c12–133a7) (133a8–134e8)

Fig. 1. The structure of the arguments in Part I of Plato’s Parmenides.

 introduction 25

any sensible thing and the form. These are the arguments about the master
and the slave, about the gods not knowing about us, the knowledge of the forms
being unattainable by us, and the like. In a totally heterogeneous ontology,
there can be no middle ground. Relations are possible only between entities
of the same type (or else the terms of the relation would have something in
common and would not be totally heterogeneous in regard to each other).
The aporia is complete: such a relation between the one and the many as
Socrates needs for his doctrine of forms is impossible whether forms are ho-
mogeneous with sensible things or they are heterogeneous with them.
The structure of the arguments in Part I is shown in Figure 1. The method
of this aporetic part of the dialogue is thoroughly Parmenidean. A strict
dilemma is set up, and Socrates is impaled on its horns: either there is only
one type of entity (collapsing forms onto sensible things or the converse), or,
if there are two types, they must be completely apart. In either case, partici-
pation is impossible; forms are no solution to the problem of the one and the
many. The method corresponds to an ontology that is likewise Parmenidean.
There are no two modes of being: whatever is can only be kaq j auJtov, ‘in it-
self’, whether there is only one type of entity or there are more than one.
But if participation is impossible and no relation can be established be-
tween the one and the many, philosophy is impossible too. However, we are
engaged in philosophy in the very act of proving its impossibility: in order
to carry out the foregoing inquiry, we have been predicating forms of forms
and ascribing well-defined characteristics to sensible things—all of which pre-
sumes some possibility of relating the one and the many. The problem is prag-
matic, not purely logical. Therefore, the solution will be reached not by proof
but by the method Plato has already used in similar circumstances, and in
which he saw the method of philosophy. One must assume, then—contrary
to Parmenides’ strictures—that an entity (form or sensible thing) can be also
‘somehow’ (pou) ‘in relation to another’ (pro;ˇ a[llo). Only thus can Helen
be beautiful without being the beautiful, and only thus can the form be both
‘in itself’ and ‘in us’.

Part II
In Part II, Parmenides will first, in Argument I, set out strictly the presup-
positions and characteristics of a Parmenidean ontology. This Argument will
lead again to an impasse. (Cf. 142a6–8.) But this time the assumptions lead-
ing to it will have been laid bare. The Argument can be seen as an exami-
nation and a critique of the hypothesis on which Part I is based. Taking its
start from the pragmatic aporia at the end of Argument I, Parmenides will
propose, in Argument II, an alternative hypothesis, whose only defense is its
ability to provide euporia for the possibility of philosophy.
Part II turns on the partial ambiguity of the verb ‘to be’ in the different
26 introduction

Arguments, designating at one time Parmenidean being (i.e., the absolute

positing of the content of the hypothesis) and at another time participation
(i.e., being ‘somehow’, as restricted in accordance with the weakened Prin-
ciple of Noncontradiction). In the course of the Arguments, Plato distin-
guishes and clarifies these two modes of being. Arguments I, IV, VI, and VIII
give us a clarification of Parmenidean being, and Arguments II, III, V, and
VII give us an explication of the Platonic concept of participation, as being
qualifiedly: that is, only in some respects but not in others.
As in all dialectical and hypothetical arguments, the conclusions are al-
ways dependent on the premises and cannot be detached from them. The
whole argument and every step in it must be interpreted strictly within the
limits established by the hypothesis in force at each stage.89 Moreover, the
aim of the argument is either to reduce to impossibility the propositions un-
der consideration (Arguments I, etc.) or else to establish euporia, the possi-
bility of the conclusions (Arguments II, etc.): hence Plato’s use of the sub-
junctive and the optative throughout these latter Arguments (with some
stylistic variations). In any case, as a detailed examination will show, the rel-
evant Arguments establish not the conclusions but only their possibility,90
according to the different respects in which they may be true.
Following Parmenides’ recommendations on method at 135c8–136e4,
Part II lays down two main Hypotheses: ‘The one is’ and ‘The one is not’.
Consequences are then drawn for the hypothesized entity (‘the one’) and
for its ‘opposite’—‘the many’, or ‘the not-one’ (later equated with ‘the oth-
ers’). But each Hypothesis is taken twice for each series of consequences: once
drawing the consequences for the one (or the many) ‘in (relation to) itself’
(or ‘in themselves’)—that is, as if no relations of any kind are possible —and
once as if it (or they) can ‘somehow’ be ‘in relation to something else’. This
gives us, in all, eight Arguments.
The general question is that of the relation of the one and the many: How
is it possible that anything may participate in other things without ceasing to
be the one thing it is? This is prior to, and more general than, the question
of the relation of sensible things and forms. In fact, the logical 91 problem is
that of the relation to its complement (if there be such) of anything that can
be said to be one. The problem of the participation of the many in the one
arises also for forms, as Parmenides intimated at 135d8–e4. The possibility

89. This was clearly seen by Pico della Mirandola (1492, cap. II): “Quibus etiam testimoniis
si non credimus, ipsum percurramus dialogum, videbimusque nusquam aliquid affirmari, sed
ubique solum quaeri: hoc si sit, quid consequetur, quid item, si non sit.” Cf. Klibansky (1943),
320–21.
90. Not their intelligibility, as Turnbull (1998: 48) would have it. I can find in the text no
basis for such an interpretation.
91. In Plato’s not purely formal understanding of logical relations.
 introduction 27

of participation of forms in each other will be shown to be a condition of the

possibility of the participation of sensible things in forms. This will not be de-
rived, and no mechanism will be given for it. Only euporia against the im-
pediments raised by Eleatic logic will have been secured. This euporia, how-
ever, is almost a by-product of a much more pervasive inquiry, encompassing
the whole of the logical web of relations between the one and the many, which
will provide the understructure for the metaphysics of the Sophist.
Note that throughout Part II of the Parmenides, no mention is made of
sensible things or of forms. This is not because Plato became disenchanted
with forms following Parmenides’ attack in Part I. Rather, Parmenides now
raises the inquiry to a higher stage of generality (a ‘higher hypothesis’, in
the terminology of Phaedo 101d5 and Republic VI 511a6). On this level, forms
and sensible things are alike considered ‘ones’.
Some considerations, such as those of the “Parmenidean” Arguments (I,
IV, VI, VIII), apply only to entities that are capable of being kaq j auJtav—that
is, forms. Other considerations apply to both forms and sensible things
alike,92 except that forms can also be pro;ˇ a[lla, ‘in relation to others’,
whereas sensible things can be only such (Arguments II, III, V, VII). Some
few apply only to entities that can be in relation to time —that is, only to sen-
sible things (Theorem II.10, Appendix, on physical changes). Figure 2 dia-
grams the Arguments in Part II of the Parmenides.
Each Argument follows a more or less rigid pattern: first, there is a defi-
nition of ‘one’ for that Argument (abbreviated “df.”). This is, at the same
time, a clarification of the meaning of ‘is’. Then comes what may be called
the Basic Theorem (1), which establishes the relation, if any, between the
whole and its parts. In fact, this amounts to an explication of the definition:
if ‘is’ is interpreted as referring to Parmenidean, absolute being, then no as-
pects or parts are possible, and the one cannot be a whole. ‘Is’ is then com-
pletely “transparent,” and there can be no distinction whatsoever between
‘one’ and ‘is’: asserting that the one is is tantamount to asserting the one.
If, on the other hand, ‘is’ is interpreted as referring to something distin-
guishable from ‘one’, then a distinction can be made within the one that is.
In this case, the one that is is a whole comprising parts or aspects, and it can
be predicated according to these aspects. Then come the various Theorems
(2–10) exploring these various aspects, with the occasional addition of lem-
mas, corollaries, and notes. Each Argument normally winds up with a con-
clusion on being as attribution and its corollary on knowledge, opinion, or
the like. The conclusion is in fact a summary of the whole Argument, bring-
ing together under ‘being’ all the attributes that have been examined in it.
The pattern is varied according to the requirements of each Argument.

92. Or, rather, to sensible things through their participation in the forms.
 The one

is is not

consequences consequences consequences consequences

for the one for the many for the one for the many

in relation in relation in relation in relation in relation in relation in relation in relation

to itself to the to the one to them- to the to itself to the one to them-
(absolute others (restricted selves others (absolute (restricted selves
Principle of (restricted Principle of (absolute (restricted Principle of Principle of (absolute
Noncontra- Principle of Noncontra- Principle of Principle of Noncontra- Noncontra- Principle of
diction) Noncontra- diction) Noncontra- Noncontra- diction) diction) Noncontra-
diction) diction) diction diction)

Argument I Argument II Argument III Argument IV Argument V Argument VI Argument VII Argument VIII

Appendix on
participation
in time
(II.10, Appendix)

Fig. 2. The structure of the Arguments in Part II of Plato’s Parmenides.

 introduction 29

It is easy to see that the order and content of the Theorems are devised
primarily for Argument II. Indeed, the distinction between whole and parts,
or aspects, makes sense only in that Argument and in those that correspond
to it, since all consequences in Argument I and its derivates are negative.
After Arguments I and II, the series of Theorems and the Theorems them-
selves are often abbreviated. The Theorems do not necessarily appear always
in the order shown below. This is the order of Argument II, for which, in
fact, the Theorems were designed. Other Arguments may have different re-
quirements for the order of the Theorems. The full sequence of the Theo-
rems is shown in Table 1. That list of categories93 can be shown to be under
Parmenidean influence, perhaps actually drawn from Parmenides’ poem. A
quick survey of Plato’s list of categories and of Parmenides’ poem yields the
parallels shown in Table 2.
The categories are partially dependent on each other, the earlier being
necessary conditions of the later, as shown in Figure 3.

A brief summary of the Arguments one by one may be helpful here. A de-
tailed analysis of each appears in the commentary.
Characteristically, Plato superimposes onto a dichotomic structure also a
linear progression from Argument to Argument. He proceeded similarly, for
example, in the simile of the Divided Line in the Republic. As we saw above,
he did this also in Part I of our dialogue, and as will be apparent from the
analysis, he does it again in Part II. Later Arguments are often dependent,
in different ways, on previous ones, and earlier conclusions must be reread
in the light of later analyses.

Hypothesis: The One Is

Argument I
Argument I, as we already saw, is a systematic analysis of Parmenidean be-
ing. Its hypothesis is the absolute Principle of Noncontradiction: to be one
is not to be many, with no restrictions allowed. It is impossible, for whatever
is, that it should be in one way but not in another. The unity of the subject is
absolute. No aspects can be distinguished in it, for this would mean that the
one is such-and-such in relation to one aspect but not in relation to another.

93. For a somewhat different list of Platonic categories, cf. Rist (1962: 8), drawing on a sug-
gestion of Alcinous (Albinus: 6.10) that in the Parmenides Plato introduced (Aristotle’s) ten cat-
egories. This is obviously false so far as Aristotle’s categories are concerned, but the Parmenides
does present a list of categories, plausibly even of ten categories, as we just saw, and Alcinous
may have had some tradition in mind, overzealously interpreting it so as to harmonize Plato
and Aristotle. Cf. also Natorp (1903), 237.
 table 1 The sequence of the Theorems and their
categories in Part II of Plato’s Parmenides
Theorem Category

df. Definitiona
1 Part(s)/whole
1.1 Part(s)
1.2 Whole
2 Limit
2.1 Unlimited
2.2 Limited
2.corollary Number
3 Extremities/middle
3.corollary Shape (round/straight)
4 Inclusion
4.1 In itself (or: in themselves, and so on)
4.2 In another (or: in others, and so on)
5 Contact
5.1 With itself
5.2 With another
5.corollary Place
6 Motion/rest
6.1 Motion
6.1.1 Alteration
6.1.2 Locomotion
6.1.2.1 Revolution
6.1.2.2 Translation
6.2 Rest
7 Sameness/difference
7.1 Same
7.1.1 As itself
7.1.2 As another
7.2 Different
7.2.1 From itself
7.2.2 From another
8 Likeness/unlikeness
8.1 Like
8.1.1 Itself
8.1.2 Another
Theorem Category

8.2 Unlike
8.2.1 Itself
8.2.2 Another
9 Equality/inequality
9.1 Equal
9.1.1 To itself
9.1.2 To another
9.2 Unequal (larger/smaller)
9.2.1 To itself
9.2.2 To another
9.corollary Equality of number
10 Being and coming to be younger-older/same age
10.1 Being
10.1.1 Younger-older
10.1.1.1 Than itself
10.1.1.2 Than another
10.1.2 Same age
10.1.2.1 As itself
10.1.2.2 As another
10.2 Coming to be
10.2.1 (As above . . .)
(etc.) (. . . )
Conclusiona Being
Corollary a Relations, knowledge, opinion, perception, name,
account, and so forth

note: Any Theorem in the sequence shown may at any level include one or more subsec-
tions not listed in this table —definition, excursus, lemma, or conclusion—or a note (or multi-
ple notes) to any of these. Furthermore, the Appendix to Theorem 10 in Argument II is itself
divided into three main subsections, and it has its own conclusion and a note.
It is important to keep in mind that the sequence of Theorems listed in this table will not
necessarily appear either in full or in exact numerical order in all Arguments.
a Although the definitions, conclusions, and corollaries to Arguments I–VIII may not be Theo-

rems strictly speaking, they are no less important. In particular, each Argument includes its own
distinct definition of ‘one’, which incidentally serves to clarify the distinct sense in which ‘is’
must be taken.
 (1) part(s)/whole

(2) limit (7) sameness/difference

number

(3) extremities/middle (8) likeness/unlikeness

shape

(4) inclusion (9) equality/inequality

(in itself/in another)

(5) contact (6) motion/rest (10) younger-older/same age

place

conclusion: being
corollary: relations, knowledge, opinion (etc.: see Table 1)

Fig. 3. The categories of being and their relations in Part II of Plato’s Parmenides. Parenthetical numerals indicate Theorem numbers.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 “‘I did not say I was going to be a witness. The Greenwich police
have asked me what I know, and I may tell you have warned me
against saying any more. I must decline to give any information
which may be used——’
“Here the wife interrupted, ‘You have said quite enough; don’t say
any more.’
“The husband drew up abruptly. I told him he had quite mistaken
my mission.
“I had been informed that he was more in Mr. Thompson’s house
than anybody else, that he had frequently had Mr. Thompson at his
house; that Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Ward had also been there, and
that I simply wanted to know what kind of people they were, and
how they lived, and was not anxious to know anything about the
Blackheath business.’
“‘Before I say any more,’ he answered, ‘I must ask you to promise
me as a particular favour that you will not mention my name in any
way.’
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘your name has been hinted at already. You have
been spoken of as Mr. B——, and I expect the Peckham people know
very well now who Mr. B—— is.’
“He did not seem pleased at this information, and was about to
tell me something more, when his wife again put the drag on, and
kept it on all the time I was in the room.
“‘You were working with Mr. Thompson on a patent for raising
sunken ships—​were you not?’
“‘I must decline to answer any questions about that.’
“‘Well, but that is a matter about which there is nothing to be
gained by reticence. In fact, I know you have got that model in your
house now, and that it is enclosed in a box like a plate-chest. I
should really, as a mere matter of curiosity, like to have a look at it.’
 “It was no use. He entrenched himself behind his spectacles, the
wife assisted him to hold the fort of his lips, and nothing further
could I obtain from him.
No.
81.

PEACE AT HIS PRISON TOILET AFTER HIS LIFE SENTENCE.

“If it had not been for that excellent lady, I think ‘Mr. B——’ would
have been induced to tell something which has not yet been made
public, though he was evidently very anxious not to say anything
which could in anyway connect him any further with the
‘Thompsons.’
“As I was leaving I tried a parting shot.
“Mrs. Thompson when she left promised to write to you, stating
where she could be found. You have had a letter, I am told. There is
now no doubt that Mrs. Thompson is merely wanted as a witness.
There can be no harm in saying if you have had that letter.”
Mr. B—— was about to speak, but his good wife was before him,
and with her ‘don’t say any more—​you have said too much
already’—​a point which I politely disputed with her—​‘Mr. B——’
shook his head, and I left the interesting couple.
“Someone has said that a woman can’t keep a secret, and an old
cynic offered a reward for the first female who could be found
capable of holding her tongue.
“I want the address of the gentleman, for I can conscientiously
claim the reward.
“I have found in the person of my friend, Mrs. B——, a lady who
can not only hold her own tongue, but that of her husband also.
“I left that house with mingled respect for the excellent good
wife, and disappointment that she did not happen, at the time I
called, to be out taking a five o’clock tea with some estimable
neighbours in the region of Evalina-road, or anywhere else except in
her own house and by her husband’s side.
“I am convinced that this gentleman and his wife could have told
me a great deal as to Peace’s life at home, and perhaps something
about his life abroad, which he may have guessed at or picked up in
his frequent interviews with his friends the Thompsons, of No. 5,
East-terrace.”
 CHAPTER CXLVIII.

THE TRIAL OF CHARLES PEACE FOR

BURGLARY.

The days and nights passed slowly and sadly enough with Charles
Peace during the brief interval between his committal and trial.
Take whatever view he would of the case he could not see any
gleam of sunshine and hope for the future. It was not possible for
any intelligent jury, after hearing the overwhelming evidence which
would be brought forward for the prosecution, to return any other
verdict than that of guilty upon the charge or charges preferred
against the ill-fated man.
Peace, despite his sanguine temperament, was forcibly impressed
with this fact. He whined and moaned and declared himself to be an
ill-used man.
His relatives and friends had deserted him in the hour of extreme
need—​so he averred. It was the way of the world, he added, and
there was therefore no reason to be surprised at a circumstance,
which, to say the truth, was one of almost daily occurrence.
He confessed that he had been greatly to blame, that under the
influence of drink and excitement he had committed a most
unwarrantable act of violence, but was at the same time truly
thankful that the life of the gallant police officer had not been
sacrificed. This was one of the greatest consolations he had in the
hour of trouble and suffering.
He affected to be so contrite, and assumed such a virtuous tone,
that those about him were half disposed to believe he had been led
into crime by a sudden impulse: nevertheless the facts were dead
against him, and a heavy sentence would be sure to follow
conviction.
As the sessions drew nigh Peace became additionally nervous and
anxious. He wrote off to several of his friends.
So long as a man is in prison before trial and condemnation he
has no work of any sort to do beyond the cleaning of his own cell
and utensils.
Books are allowed him, and writing materials, as before observed.
Whatever a man writes is inspected and read by the governor, and
every sheet of paper is counted, and has to be accounted for.
This course is adopted so that prisoners may be prevented from
writing letters to their friends outside without undergoing the
inspection of the governor.
The rule is an arbitrary one, and it does not seem to be
altogether just. They have no right to be placed under such rigid
surveillance before they are proved guilty.
About 420,000 persons in the course of a year pass through the
hands of the police in England and Wales. Of these, about 275,000
are convicted, some summarily, others after trial by jury, the former
being seventeen times as numerous as the latter.
The great majority of these mean nothing but the slightest
punishments, generally fines; but about 70,000 are sentenced to
imprisonment. Of these, 6000 in round numbers are children under
sixteen years of age, nearly 1000 of whom are committed to
reformatories for most of the remainder the cellular prisons probably
furnish sufficient correction.
 Of the adults rather more than 2000 are sentenced to penal
servitude.
Of the 420,000 persons apprehended by the police more than
80,000 are either known or suspected to be criminals by trade, and
from 50,000 to 60,000 are known to be living in total idleness and
vice.
This is, of course, a terrible state of things, but as yet no remedy
has been found to repress crime in the metropolis or elsewhere.
Peace was a criminal of the most irreclaimable, daring, and
desperate order, but this was not known to the authorities at—​for a
certainty—​the time of his arrest, but it afterwards became
sufficiently manifest.
At length the day arrived on which Peace was to be tried.
He was in close converse with his lawyer on the preceding day,
and was informed that Mr. Montague Williams would conduct the
defence.
The legal gentleman did not tell his client that the case was in
every way a hopeless one, but bade him keep up his spirits and
hope for the best.
Before the court was duly opened, barristers and solicitors were
to be seen ascending the staircase, ducking mysteriously into ante-
rooms, and it was evident enough that there was to be a sort of
legal field day.
In the several robing-rooms counsel were dressing like other
actors for their parts.
The judge was arraying himself in his robes of office, and
everybody appeared to be engaged on some important business.
A court of justice is built everywhere much in the same fashion—​a
throne for the judge, benches right and left for the sheriff and
municipal authorities, boxes on each side for the juries, separate
pews for the warder and clerk of the court, convenient seats for the
barristers. Then there is the witness-box, the dock, and benches
piled tier over tier for the convenience of the spectators, and, as a
matter of course, the ventilation is radically bad.
There is also a stone hall outside in which clients congregate till
their turn comes on, and witness-rooms.
In addition to this, British witnesses seem to possess an
inexhaustible supply of sandwiches in brown paper, and ardent
spirits in old medicine bottles: upon these they feed incessantly,
partly to kill time, and partly to fortify their moral courage, which
they know will soon be tried in public as severely as the integrity of
the prisoners.
Up and down a passage which leads to the jury-room and to the
private entrances into the court, one may see the attorneys in their
Sunday shabby-genteel, and in great bustle and importance, running
backwards and forwards, now halting to confab with gentlemen who
are relations of the prisoners, or are subpœnaed witnesses—​now
with the barristers who wear stereotyped smiles upon their faces, as
if law life was a pleasant dream.
The judge entered the court and the usual formulæ had to be
gone through. The benches appointed for the use of barristers were
tolerably well filled.
The first case to be tried was a charge of embezzlement. It did
not occupy a great space of time, as it was as clear as the sun at
noon-day—​that is on days that luminary does condescend to shine.
Peace was anxiously waiting his turn with two other fellow-
prisoners. To his ineffable disgust one of these was the lad “Cakey,”
as he was termed, who had so annoyed him in the exercise-yard. He
was charged with picking pockets, in the practice of which he was an
adept.
 “Strike me lucky,” said the audacious young ruffian. “I hopes as
how they won’t keep us waiting long—​don’t you?”
“Mind your own business,” returned Peace.
“Vell, there aint no call to be humpy about the matter. I spoke
civilly enough—​didn’t I?”
“You are too fast for my book,” said Peace. “You’re like a sheep’s
head—​all jaw.”
“Oh, carry me out and bury me dacent, but you’re as good as a
play, you are, and no flies,” said the pickpocket. “Blest if you couldn’t
make a fortin’ as a mummer; but I say, old man, I ’xpect you’ll get it
rather ’ot. What made yer fire yer pop-gun at a ‘bobby,’ eh?”
“Mind your own business, and don’t interfere with me.”
“Vell, I’m sorry for yer, and I hopes as how——”
“Hold your tongue, you fool,” interrupted our hero. “You’ll have
enough to do to prove your innocence, I’m thinking.”
“Vell, now, we agree this once. I’m of the same ’pinion. They’ll be
down upon me as dead as a hammer. I’ll lay yer half a bull that they
give me two ‘stretch.’ I mek up my mind to that there, but you—​vell,
I don’t know how it ’ill go vith you, old un; but yer had a pretty
smart tussle with yer bobby—​didn’t you?”
“Let the gentleman be,” said the other prisoner, who, like “Cakey,”
was hardly out of his teens. “Yer sees as how he don’t like it. I’m
ashamed on yer. This isn’t a time for chaff—​is it?”
“I don’t know that it is, but it’s better than sitting like a set of
mutes—​aint it? It’s enough to give a fellow the hump to be sitting
still a waitin’ to be placed in the dock.”
The conversation, if it could be so termed, was brought to a close
by a man coming in and saying to the young pickpocket—
 “Now then, this way.”
Cakey was placed in the dock. The trial did not last half an hour.
He was found guilty, and sentenced to eighteen months’
imprisonment.
He considered the sentence a most lenient one, and left the court
in better spirits than he had entered it. He found Peace in the
passage when he was returning to the gaol.
“Vat do yer think, guv’nor? Only eighteen months. There’s for you
—​I’ve lost my half bull.”
Peace was too much wrapped up in his own thoughts to take any
heed of the playful youth who was addressing him.
His case was the next, and as he was placed in the dock he
glanced furtively round the court.
The first face he recognised was that of Robinson, the policeman,
then his glance fell upon several others that were familiar to him,
but he did not see any of his Sheffield friends. “So much the better,”
murmured he.
Mr. Poland was engaged in earnest conversation with a police-
inspector, while Mr. Douglas Straight was scanning some papers
before him.
Peace was conscious that he was an object of interest, for he saw
that the eyes of many persons were upon him.
He endeavoured to put on a look of humility and dejection,
hoping thereby to excite sympathy.
He glanced at the jury to see if they looked mercifully disposed or
otherwise. One or two jurors struck him as being hard-featured men,
who were bent upon doing their duty fearlessly.
It was on the morning of Tuesday the 19th of November, 1878,
on which this trial took place. It was of course an eventful day in the
history of our hero.
The case was tried at the Central Criminal Court, before Mr.
Justice Hawkins, John Ward alias Charles Peace aged sixty (he was
so put down, although he had not reached that age by three years)
who was described as a sailor, was indicted for a burglary in the
dwelling-house of James Alexander Burness, and stealing therefrom
a quantity of plate, the property of the aforesaid James Alexander
Burness.
He was charged also with feloniously shooting at Edward
Robinson, a police constable, with intent to murder him.
Mr. Poland and Mr. Douglas Straight conducted the prosecution for
the Treasury.
The prisoner was defended by Mr. Montagu Williams and Mr.
Austin Metcalfe.
There was a dead silence when the case came on, and a number
of persons from Greenwich, Blackheath, and elsewhere, who had
been suffering from the depredations of burglars, were present at
the trial; and, in addition to these, in an obscure corner sat,
unobserved by Peace, Aveline’s husband and Lady Marvlynn.
The indictment proceeded with was the charge of shooting at the
constable.
Edward Robinson was then examined. He said: On the morning of
the 10th of October I was on duty at Blackheath in the avenue
leading from St. John’s-park, the back of the residence of Mr.
Burness. I noticed the flickering of a light in Mr. Burness’s drawing-
room, and this excited my suspicion, and I procured the assistance
of another constable named Girling. The light continued to move
about the house, and I was assisted by Girling on to the wall. At this
time a sergeant named Brown came up, and he went to the front of
the house and I heard the bell ring, when the light was extinguished
immediately, and the prisoner jumped out of the drawing-room
window to the lawn. When I saw him in the act of running away I
followed him, and he turned round and pointed a revolver at my
head, and said, “Keep back; keep off, or by —— I will shoot you.” I
said to him, “you had better not,” and he immediately fired three
chambers of a revolver at my head. Two shots passed over my head
and the third by the side of my head. I made a rush at him and he
fired a fourth shot, when I closed with him and struck him on the
face with my left hand. The prisoner then said, “You ——, I will
settle you this time!” and then fired a fifth shot, which wounded me
in the right arm. I seized the prisoner then, and threw him down,
when the prisoner exclaimed, “You ——, I will give you something
else!” and tried to put his hand in his pocket. I struggled with him
and got the revolver from him, and struck him several blows with it.
I held him down till Sergeant Brown came up and he was then
secured. The revolver was strapped round his wrist. I began to feel
faint from loss of blood at this time, and handed the prisoner over to
Sergeant Brown and Girling.
Charles Brown, a sergeant of police, proved that he heard the
shots fired and the cries for assistance, and said that when he went
to the spot he found Robinson lying above the prisoner with a six-
chambered revolver in his hand, but it was strapped round the
prisoner’s arm. On the prisoner he found a silver flask, a banker’s
cheque-book, and a letter-case, which were afterwards identified by
Mr. Burness, and a small crowbar.
William Girling, the other policeman, confirmed the testimony of
the previous witnesses as to the five shots being fired, and he also
said that he heard the prisoner say that he only did it to frighten
him. On the prisoner he found an auger, a jemmy, a gimlet, and
other housebreaking implements. The prisoner attempted to get
away after he had apprehended him, but he hit him with his staff.
Mr. Bonny, an inspector of the R Division, proved that he
examined Mr. Burness’s house and found that several places had
been broken open with a jemmy.
 The prisoner refused to give his name and address, and when he
was asked for them, he replied, “Find out.”
Sarah Selina Cooper, servant to Mr. Burness, proved that she
found a bullet in the drawing-room on the morning after the
occurrence.
Mr. Montagu Williams, on behalf of the prisoner, entreated the
jury, in the first place, not to allow any prejudice that might have
been created in their minds by what they had read about the
number of burglaries that had been committed in this
neighbourhood to operate against the prisoner, but to be guided
solely by the evidence relating to the particular charge. He said that
his case was that the prisoner did not intend to murder the
constable, but that all he desired was to get away; and he argued
that the facts were of a character that tended to support this view of
the case.
The jury, after a very short deliberation, found the prisoner guilty
upon the first count of the indictment, which charged him with
discharging the revolver at the constable with intent to murder him.
The jury, at the same time, desired to express their admiration of
the courageous conduct of the constable, and expressed a hope that
he would receive some reward for the way in which he had acted.
The foreman of the jury handed in a written paper to that effect.
Mr. Justice Hawkins: I am not surprised, gentlemen, that you
should have made this representation, for the constable has certainly
behaved in a very gallant manner.
Mr. Poland said that probably his lordship would like to hear
something of the previous history of the prisoner.
Mr. Justice Hawkins said he should be glad to receive any
information that could be given to him respecting the prisoner.
Inspector Bonny then stated that at the prisoner’s house at
Sheffield there was found a large quantity of property, and in
twenty-six cases property had been identified by the owners as the
produce of different burglaries. The necessary legal proofs were not
present in court, but they could be produced on the following
morning.
Mr. Justice Hawkins said he did not think it was necessary to
postpone passing judgment, as he thought the court was already in
possession of sufficient information to leave no doubt as to what
course should be taken.
Mr. Read, the deputy clerk of arraigns, then put the usual formal
question to the prisoner whether he had anything to say why
judgment should not be pronounced upon him.
The prisoner, in reply, said: Yes; I have this to say, my lord, I have
not been fairly dealt with: and I declare before God that I never had
the intention to kill the prosecutor, and all I meant to do was to
frighten him, in order that I might get away. If I had had the
intention to kill him I could easily have done it, but I never had that
intention. I declare I did not fire five shots—​I only fired four, and I
think I can show you, my lord, now. I can prove that only four shots
were fired. If your lordship will look at the pistol, you will see that it
goes off very easily, and the sixth barrel went off of its own accord
after I was taken into custody. At the time the fifth shot was fired
the constable had hold of my arm, and the pistol went off quite by
accident. The prisoner then exclaimed with great earnestness, “I
really did not know that the pistol was loaded, and I hope, my lord,
that you will have mercy on me. I feel that I have disgraced myself. I
am not fit either to live or die. I am not prepared to meet my God,
but still I feel that my career has been made to appear much worse
than it really is. Oh, my lord, do have mercy on me; do give me one
chance of repenting and of preparing myself to meet my God. Do,
my lord, have mercy on me; and I assure you that you shall never
repent it. As you hope for mercy yourself at the hands of the great
God, do have mercy on me, and give me a chance of redeeming my
character and preparing myself to meet my God. I pray and beseech
you to have mercy on me.”
 The prisoner delivered this speech in a calm and earnest tone of
voice, and at the conclusion he appeared to be quite overcome by
his feelings.
Mr. Justice Hawkins then, addressing the prisoner, said: John
Ward, the jury have found you “Guilty,” upon the most irresistible
evidence, of having fired this pistol five times at the constable with
intent to murder him, and I must say that I entirely concur in that
verdict, and I do not believe that any other would, upon
consideration, have been satisfactory to themselves. You were
detected in the act of committing a burglary in the house of a
gentleman, and, putting altogether aside what may have been your
conduct on other occasions, the circumstances of this particular case
are quite sufficient to prove to my mind that you are an
accomplished burglar, and that you went to this house determined to
rob by fair means if you could, but armed in such a manner that you
were also determined to resort to foul means if necessary to escape
detection. You have asserted that you only fired the pistol at the
constable in order to frighten him, that thus you might be enabled to
make your escape. I do not believe you. The shot was fired at his
head, and but that he was guarding his head at the time with his
arm he would have received the shot upon it, and if that had been
the case death would probably have been the result, and you would
at this moment probably be receiving a sentence of death. I do not
consider it at all necessary to make any inquiry into your
antecedents; the facts before me are quite sufficient to show that
you are an accomplished burglar, and a man who would not hesitate
to commit murder in carrying out that object. Notwithstanding your
age, therefore, I feel that I should fail in my duty to the public if I
did not pass upon you the extreme sentence of the law for the
offence of which you have been convicted, which is that you be kept
in penal servitude for the rest of your natural life.
The prisoner appeared to be panic-stricken at the sentence. He
uttered a series of moans, and fell into the arms of the warders in
attendance, in a state of perfect prostration.
 Whether his emotion was real or not it is not easy to say, but
certainly on this occasion Peace completely broke down.
He had not for a moment contemplated having so severe a
sentence passed on him, and he afterwards said it was a shame,
and a most cruel merciless punishment.
At this moment all his bravado forsook him, and his despair and
anguish were pitiful to behold.
Radically bad as the man was there were a few persons among
the spectators who pitied him and thought him hardly dealt by.
This is invariably the case. No matter how great the criminal, or
how many heinous offences he may have been guilty of, misplaced
sympathy is sure to follow his sentence.
Lady Marvlynn and Sir J. Battershall were greatly moved when the
sentence was passed upon the prisoner.
Her ladyship, from her own personal experience, knew the brutal
nature of the man. Nevertheless, she was much affected at the issue
of the proceedings.
“Miserable wretch!” she ejaculated. “I should have thought six, or
ten years at the most, would have sufficed in a case of this sort, but
of course Mr. Justice Hawkins is, I suppose, the best judge.”
“I don’t think it would be possible to find a better,” returned her
companion. “I confess I cannot myself see any palliation, any
reasonable excuse, for the crime of which he has been found guilty
upon the clearest evidence.”
“No, I suppose there is none,” returned Lady Marvlynn; “but still
penal servitude for life! Why it is almost worse than death.”
“If Robinson had succumbed to his injuries there would have
been but one course left—​his murderer would have to suffer the
extreme penalty of the law. You do not duly consider the matter, my
lady.”
“I hope I do. But the Lady Aveline, this will be sad news for her.”
“Sad!” exclaimed the baronet. “I do not see how that can be.”
“Ah, I know she will be sorry to hear of his untimely fate.”
“Really, Lady Marvlynn, you surprise me. I have yet to learn that
my wife has any sympathy for ruffians of this type.”
“I don’t say she has sympathy, but she possesses the inestimable
quality of mercy—​which blesses him that gives, and him that takes—​
and she has a feeling heart. That you know.”
“Oh, most certainly. No man knows it better. Still I cannot for the
life of me understand why you and Aveline are so wrapped up in this
man.”
“You will not be surprised when you know all.”
The baronet made no further remark, but seemed lost in a
reverie.
Peace, who was completely overcome, had to be carried out of
court.
Mr. Justice Hawkins then directed the prosecutor, Robinson, to
stand forward, and, addressing him, said: The jury have expressed
their admiration at the bravery you have displayed in this matter,
and have also expressed a wish that you should receive some
reward. In the first place, I hand to you the paper on which the jury
have expressed their opinion of your conduct, in order that you may
keep it and refer to it in after life, and that it may be an incentive to
future good conduct. I quite concur in the opinion of the jury with
regard to the manner in which you have acted on this occasion, and
I think the country ought to be proud of you and of the force to
which you belong, and I have great pleasure in ordering you a
reward of £25 for your gallant conduct.
The prosecutor thanked his lordship, and the proceedings then
terminated.
When Peace returned to Newgate after his sentence he
immediately came under another class, and his real imprisonment
began.
He moaned and groaned as if in deep pain, and there is but little
doubt as to his sufferings at this time.
He was conducted downstairs to the same floor as the baths; he
made no observation, but was evidently in a state of prostration, but
he did manage with assistance to reach that part of the City prison
where another painful ceremony had to be gone through.
The garments he had on he was no longer permitted to wear.
They had to be exchanged for those of a convict. Never again
was he destined to wear the clothes of a free man.
He had been previously told that whatever clothes he wore would
be forfeited.
They were not of much value, it is true, for, at the time of his
capture, he was encased in his shabby long-tailed coat, as
represented in the illustration on the front page of the preceding
number.
This valuable garment, together with his low-crowned hat and
other articles that completed his suit, were forfeited to the Crown—​
doubtlessly have been preserved as relics of the most daring burglar
of modern times.
He heaved a profound sigh, which seemed to come from the
bottom of his heart, when he was arrayed in the convict garb, with
which, however, he was but too familiar.
 After he had shuffled into his new attire, he was told to select
from a bundle of dirty, greasy-looking things what was supposed to
be a woollen cap of the Scotch-bound type; he chose one which
appeared to fit him the best, and then the painful ceremony was
over.
“I’ve been cruelly used,” he ejaculated. “The sentence was a most
unjust one. I never intended to hurt the bobby. I’ll take my solemn
oath that nothing was further from my thoughts. But my friends will
not see me thus wronged without making an effort on my behalf.
They will send a petition to the Home Office.”
“Well that can be done, of course,” observed one of the warders,
who felt some commiseration for the wretched man.
“It must be done.”
“Time enough for that.”
“Penal servitude for life. It’s scandalous.”
The warders were not disposed to continue the conversation; so
they marched their prisoner off to his cell.
Peace found he had to mount higher in the world, to the top
landing, and he was located on the north side of the wall, he
hitherto having been on the south.
The first thing that struck him on entering his new abode was the
smell of tar—​good, wholesome, honest tar. He had been described in
the indictment as a sailor. Why or wherefore was not clearly made
manifest.
It is true that he had been on board ship once or twice during his
chequered career, but he could not lay claim to being much of a
sailor, but he soon found out that his long days of comparative
idleness had come to an end.
 The smell of the tar gave him a gentle hint of the agreeable
process of oakum-picking, this being one of the occupations prison
authorities had invented for the amusement of the prisoners under
their charge.
The cell was an exact counterpart of the one he had left, except
that the dust from the oakum had taken off a good deal of the
brilliant cleanliness of the floor and walls.
He was most miserable, and found it impossible to regard his new
sphere of occupation with complacency. He had passed through a
terrible ordeal, had hoped against hope, but now the terrible reality
came upon him with redoubled force.
His worst fears became an actual reality: he was a convict, and
would remain so to the end of his life. He slept but little during the
night—​when he thought of his sentence he shuddered. He tossed
restlessly in his hammock, groaned and gnashed his teeth.
“A life!” he ejaculated. “It’s too bad—​a burning shame.”
Then he thought of getting his friends to send in a memorial to
the Home Office, praying for a commutation of the severe sentence
passed upon him.
He clung to this hope even as a drowning man is said to cling to a
straw.
The next morning, while he was cleaning his cell, three pieces of
junk or old rope that had been part of the standing rigging of some
old ship were flung into his cell, with an intimation that he would
have a “fiddle” presently.
“Umph!” he ejaculated, “here’s some of their cursed stuff. I know
what that means—​aching fingers and endless toil.”
He was perfectly correct in this conjecture.
 After some little time a warder he had never seen before, except
at a distance, entered his narrow prison-house, and told him that he
would have to pick four pounds of oakum every day while he was in
Newgate, or else his allowance of food would run short.
“Oh, I dare say,” replied Peace. “Then I shall have to go on short
commons, ’cause you see I shan’t be able to do the quantity you
require.”
“That’s no business of mine,” returned the warder; “I don’t make
the rules. All I have to do is to see that they are carried out.”
“Much obliged to you for your information,” exclaimed the
prisoner; “I’ve been cruelly used.”
“I’ve nothing to do with that,” said the warder, slamming the door
of the cell.
“A set of merciless wretches,” ejaculated Peace. “I know the ways
of them but too well.”
He sat down on his stool, and buried his face in his hands.
After he had devoured his breakfast the taskmaster-warder paid
him a visit, bringing with him the “fiddle,” on which he was to play a
tune called “Four pounds of oakum a day.”
It consisted of nothing but a rope and a long crooked nail. He
showed Peace how to break up the block of junk, and to divide the
strands of the rope.
There was, however, but little necessity for the warder to enter
into a description of the work, since the prisoner he was instructing
knew the odious business pretty well from his previous experience in
the ways of prison life.
However, he affected to be a novice, and listened to all the
warder had to say, apparently paying the greatest attention to his
instructions.
 The four pounds did not look so much after all, but when pulled
to pieces and divided into strands, it seemed to grow wonderfully in
size, and Peace knew the amount of labour required to pick it.
He made a wry face and groaned, but did not complain.
When the strands were all divided his instructor showed him how
to pull them to pieces.
Peace set to work, being perfectly well assured that the task must
be got through. He soon found out—​as others had done before him
—​that oakum-picking made his fingers and thumbs sore and painful;
nevertheless he persevered—​the task seemed to be an interminable
one.
When he saw how little progress he had made in the first hour his
heart seemed to sink, and he remembered the many miserable and
lonely hours he had passed in convict prisons.
He was on the side of the gaol nearest to Newgate-street. His cell
was on the top floor and the window was open, so that he now
heard much plainer the noise of the street traffic, which spoke to
him of the outside world.
There was something consolatory in even hearing the sounds of
the passing vehicles as they rumbled along in one of the great
thoroughfares of the busy city.
At chapel next morning he with others, who had been tried at the
same sessions, were marched into a cage under the women’s
gallery, and locked in. Once a day only were they exercised out of
doors, and this took place in a much smaller yard than he had
walked in before his conviction.
This was a matter of no very great importance; one yard was as
good as another to him.
He bore up as best he could, hoping that sooner or later he might
succeed in getting a commutation of his sentence. This hope,
however, was never destined to be realised.
Every morning the quantum of “junk” was served out, and in the
evening the taskmaster came round with weights and scales to take
each man’s oakum.
There was no cheating in respect to the requisite quantity of
oakum on these occasions.
The prisoner who had picked his full allowance was permitted to
have the remainder of his time to himself for the rest of the day; but
it was sharp work for the best of them to get through the four
pounds of oakum.
Many now found it impossible to get through that quantity. Some
could not do as much as two pounds, although they worked from
morning till nine o’clock at night.
The old “lags,” who were well used to the work, were, in most
cases, able to do their quantum.
About three or four days after his sentence, a warder entered
Peace’s cell with another prisoner, to crop and shave him.
Peace knew this ceremony had to be gone through, and was,
therefore, in no way surprised at the appearance of his new visitors.
He begged to be allowed to shave himself, but this request was
refused; so he sat himself down, and submitted himself to the
operator, who was a regular bungler.
He, however, managed to effect a clean scrape, after which
Peace’s hair was clipped to about half an inch long. He had not much
hair on his head at this time, but what there was had to be reduced
to the regular length.
The person who performed the operation was very loquacious;
most members of the hair-dressing fraternity usually are so, and
Peace’s barber was confidential and communicative. He affected to
commiserate with our hero, and deprecated in the strongest terms
the severity of the sentence passed upon him.
He also told Peace that he (the barber) had done a “lagging”
before, and that he was doing a six years’ “stretch” at the present
time.
This playful conversation was not interrupted by the warder in
attendance, who looked on as the operation was performed, and
occasionally indulged in a smile as some pertinent remark fell from
the lips of the perruquier.
After the shaving and cropping the barber wished Peace good-
bye, bade him keep his spirits up, and hope for the best.
What that best was he did not say, but he tripped merrily out of
the cell, with a nod to its occupant, and once more our hero found
himself alone.
 CHAPTER CXLIX.

THE TROUBLES OF MRS. PEACE.

After Peace’s arrest, trial, and conviction, the house in the

Evalina-road was no longer a home for his miserable partner.
Mrs. Peace and the woman Thompson could not agree, and this,
in addition to other circumstances, caused Mrs. Peace to make a
precipitate retreat from the neighbourhood of Peckham, and Mrs.
Thompson was left to pursue her own erratic course.
There was no help for this. It was not at all likely that the two
women would agree in the absence of their master.
Mrs. Peace left Peckham, and at once proceeded to Hull, and from
thence to Sheffield. But the police were actively engaged in ferreting
out every scrap of information which might lead to the detection of
other crimes committed by our hero.
As a natural consequence his miserable partner was suspected,
and after some searching inquiries she was arrested and taken
before the sitting magistrates at Sheffield, as will be seen from the
following report:—
At the Sheffield Town Hall, yesterday, before the Mayor (Ald.
Mappin) and W. E. Laycock, Esq., Hannah Peace, a respectably-
dressed woman, 58 years of age, of No. 4, Hazel-road, Darnall, the
wife of Charles Peace, picture-frame dealer, who murdered Mr.
Arthur Dyson, engineer, at Banner Cross-terrace, on the 29th
November, 1876, was brought up under circumstances which are at
present exciting unusual interest.
The charge against her was that of being an accomplice in the
recent Blackheath burglaries, on the ground that certain articles of
property found at the house where she is living had been identified
as part of the booty obtained at Blackheath.
Prisoner seems a fairly respectable, well-dressed woman, and
appeared to feel her position acutely, looking very nervous and
uneasy, and occasionally sobbing. She was accommodated with a
seat in the dock.
The property includes several parcels of jewellery, a silk dress,
two watches, and a patent clock. Mrs. Peace was charged with
stealing the property, or of having received it knowing it to have
been stolen. A number of persons crowded into the court during the
few minutes the case was being heard.
The Chief Constable said: The prisoner has been apprehended on
suspicion of having stolen property or with having received it
knowing it to have been stolen. I shall put a witness in the box, and
after his examination I shall have to ask for a remand for a week.
Henry Phillips said: I am Inspector of the Metropolitan police,
attached to the Criminal Investigation Department, and stationed at
Greenwich. There have recently been a considerable number of
burglaries committed in the neighbourhood of Greenwich and
Blackheath. At one of the houses that was burglariously broken into
information was given as to a silk dress though I cannot swear to
the colour. A little mantelpiece clock was stolen bearing the
inscription “Waterbury Clock Company. Patented Sept. 11, 1877,”
and the stolen clock in every respect corresponds, I believe, with
this clock. Some other houses were broken into, and property,
corresponding with some of that now produced, was stolen. I
believe if a remand is granted I shall be able to get further evidence.
 Mr. Robinson (to prisoner): Do you wish to ask any questions
now?
Prisoner (sobbing): I have not received them knowing them to
have been stolen; no, I have not.
Inspector Twibell said: I went with the last witness to the house
of the prisoner, who is living at Attercliffe, yesterday. I found in her
house and in her possession the property now produced.
The Bench: All of it?
The Chief Constable: Yes, and a great deal more.
Mr. Robinson again asked the prisoner if she had any questions to
ask.
Prisoner: I do say that I did not know they had been stolen.
The Chief Constable (to the Bench): I have now to ask that the
prisoner may be remanded for a week.
The prisoner was accordingly remanded for a week.
Early in the afternoon Inspector Phillips, taking with him the
stolen property, returned to London.
From inquiries made by our reporter it has been ascertained that
Hannah Peace has resided for a considerable period at Hull.
About a month ago, however, she came to Darnall, to be present
at the confinement of her daughter, who resides with her husband at
4, Hazel-road, Britannia-road.
Although the house is stated to be in the road, it is really in a
court some distance from the thoroughfare—​the middle one of a row
of seven.
Mrs. Peace brought with her to Sheffield a large box, which she
stated contained her wearing apparel and a few “odds and ends.”
 She gave it out that she had been obliged to break her Hull home
up on account of the persistent attentions of the police, who
“dogged” her in every direction, and made her life a burden.
The “odds and ends” she brought with her are likely to get her
into serious trouble unless she can explain how they included goods
which originally belonged to persons in the neighbourhood of
Blackheath.
During the time Mrs. Peace has been resident at her daughter’s
house she has not, as many persons supposed, kept within doors so
as to avoid being noticed. On the contrary, she has moved about and
freely conversed with her neighbours, who were greatly surprised
when the police apprehended her.
The opinion of the neighbours is generally favourable to Mrs.
Peace. People are loth to believe that she was the person to connive
at the crime with which she is at present charged. They all bear
testimony to her good character so far as they could tell.
The daughter and her husband appear respectable people, and
have resided at their present address for several years.
After further examination at Sheffield, Mrs. Peace was ultimately
sent to London, and on Saturday, Dec. 7th, 1878, she appeared at
Bow-street, before Mr. Flowers.
The following is a report of her first examination in London:—
Hannah Peace, wife of Charles Peace, the Blackheath burglar, now
undergoing penal servitude for the attempt on the life of a police-
constable while in the execution of his duty, was brought up on
remand granted by the justices of Sheffield, charged with stealing or
otherwise receiving a clock the property of Mrs. Dadson, of 5,
Kidbrook-terrace, Blackheath, part of the proceeds of a burglary
committed on the 2nd of August. The clock produced in court, was
found by the inspector at Darnall, near Sheffield.
 Henry Phillips, inspector of the R Division of the Greenwich police,
having been duly sworn, said the prisoner, Hannah Peace, had been
remanded by the justices at Sheffield several times for her supposed
connection with the burglaries committed in Blackheath by her
husband, and was, on Friday, finally remanded to London. A small
mantel-piece clock had been stolen on the 2nd of August last, from
the house of Mrs. Dadson, of 5, Kidbrook-terrace, Blackheath, and
corresponded in all respects with one found at prisoner’s house, on
the 7th November at Darnall, near Sheffield, when he searched it in
company with Inspector Twibell. The depositions producted were
taken at Sheffield.
Miss Elizabeth Marian Collison Dadson, daughter of Mrs. Mary
Campbell Dadson, widow, of No. 5, Kidbrook-terrace, Blackheath,
deposed that the clock produced was her mother’s property, and was
first missed on the morning of the 3rd of August. The house had
been forcibly entered on the night previous—​August 2nd.
Mr. Flowers: I shall remand the case till this day week. Prisoner,
have you anything to say?
Mrs. Peace, who had been accommodated with a seat during the
two or three minutes she was in court, then rose, and in a trembling
voice, said: I did not steal the clock, nor did I know that it was
stolen. I have no question to ask.
She was then removed from the dock.
There can be but little doubt as to her being a woman “more
sinned against than sinning,” but the fact of her being the wife of
Charles Peace brought her under the ban of the law, and for a long
time she was in the depths of trouble, not very well knowing the
nature of the charges that were to be brought against her.
It is hardly possible to estimate the anxiety and sufferings the
guilty acts of a man like Peace entail upon innocent persons.
 When we say innocent persons, we include his unhappy wife, for,
despite the array of evidence brought against her, the police failed to
prove her complicity in the crimes committed by her husband.
It will be seen by the following report of her second examination
that the learned gentleman engaged for the prosecution strove to
prove that the ill-fated Mrs. Peace had been guilty of acts which
were in themselves most suspicious, if not absolutely criminating.

BLACKHEATH BURGLARIES.—​THE EXAMINATION OF MRS. PEACE.

At the Bow-street Police-court, London, on Saturday, before Mr.
Vaughan, Hannah Peace, aged fifty-eight, believed to be the wife of
the celebrated Charles Peace, burglar and alleged murderer, was
brought up in custody on remand, charged with stealing and
receiving a clock and a quantity of other articles, which it is alleged
are the proceeds of numerous burglaries committed by her supposed
husband.
Mr. Poland, barrister, instructed by Mr. Pollard, the solicitor to the
Treasury, appeared for the prosecution. Mr. Walter Beard (Messrs.
Beard and Son, solicitors, Basinghall-street, E.C.) was instructed for
the defence.
Mr. Poland, in proceeding to open the case on behalf of the
prosecution, said in this case the prisoner is charged before you in
the name of Hannah Peace with stealing and receiving a quantity of
property, the proceeds of a number of burglaries which have been
committed in various parts of London. It appears that a man, who
was tried at the last sessions at the Central Criminal Court by the
name of John Ward, alias Charles Peace, was sentenced to penal
servitude for life for shooting at a constable, with intent to murder
him, on the 10th of October last; and he was then in the act of
committing a burglary at Blackheath. Now, sir, there is no question
whatever that we are in a condition to show that that man
undoubtedly was a professional burglar; that he was in the habit of
going about to different parts of London, particularly Blackheath,
committing burglaries, and taking from houses where these offences
were committed valuable property, and disposing of it for his own
advantage. The police, of course, endeavoured to find out what had
become of the property, and where this man had been living, and
they somehow discovered that he had been living at No. 5, East-
terrace, Evalina-road, Nunhead, which is in the parish of Peckham,
since May, 1878, in the name of John Thompson, and with a woman
—​a woman, I think, of about thirty years of age—​who lived with him
as Mrs. Thompson. In the same house the prisoner also lived, and
she was then passing, I believe, by the name of Mrs. Ward; and
there was also a young man living there who was called Willie Ward,
and he was stated to be the son of the prisoner, or, as she was
called, Mrs. Ward. This man (Peace) having been arrested on the
10th October, of course he did not go home that night or the
following morning. The persons living in that house must have
known that he had been arrested, and the prisoner appears on that
day to have removed three boxes, with the assistance of a railway
porter, to the Nunhead station, and then to the King’s-cross station,
and these boxes were taken down to Nottingham. At Nottingham
she went, I believe, to a house occupied by some relations of the
woman who was passing as the wife of this man, but they, I think,
declined to allow these boxes to be brought there, and we find that
on the following day, the 12th October, the prisoner went with some
portion of the property to No. 4, Hazel-road, Darnall, which is three
miles from Sheffield. At that place her son-in-law and daughter lived,
a man of the name of John Bolsover, who is a working collier. On
Nov. 6th the police went to Bolsover’s house at Darnall, and
searched the place, and there found a quantity of property, which I
shall be able to show you was the proceeds of some of these
burglaries. On the 14th of November they made a further search,
and found other property. The prisoner, when she was taken into
custody, stated that she had received various things, but she did not
know that they were stolen. She admitted that she had removed the
things, and she stated also that she was the wife of the man who
had been living at No. 5, East-terrace, Evalinaroad. When she stated