the conception of ideas by a process of generalization. At the same time,
he points out a difficulty, which appears to be involved--viz. that the
process of generalization will go on to infinity. Socrates meets the
supposed difficulty by a flash of light, which is indeed the true answer
'that the ideas are in our minds only.' Neither realism is the truth, nor
nominalism is the truth, but conceptualism; and conceptualism or any other
psychological theory falls very far short of the infinite subtlety of
language and thought.

But the realism of ancient philosophy will not admit of this answer, which
is repelled by Parmenides with another truth or half-truth of later
philosophy, 'Every subject or subjective must have an object.' Here is the
great though unconscious truth (shall we say?) or error, which underlay the
early Greek philosophy. 'Ideas must have a real existence;' they are not
mere forms or opinions, which may be changed arbitrarily by individuals.
But the early Greek philosopher never clearly saw that true ideas were only
universal facts, and that there might be error in universals as well as in
particulars.

Socrates makes one more attempt to defend the Platonic Ideas by
representing them as paradigms; this is again answered by the 'argumentum
ad infinitum.' We may remark, in passing, that the process which is thus
described has no real existence. The mind, after having obtained a general
idea, does not really go on to form another which includes that, and all
the individuals contained under it, and another and another without end.
The difficulty belongs in fact to the Megarian age of philosophy, and is
due to their illogical logic, and to the general ignorance of the ancients
respecting the part played by language in the process of thought. No such
perplexity could ever trouble a modern metaphysician, any more than the
fallacy of 'calvus' or 'acervus,' or of 'Achilles and the tortoise.' These