philosophy was a 'reductio ad absurdum' of their isolation. To restore
them to their natural connexion and to detect the negative element in them
is the aim of Plato in the Sophist. But his view of their connexion falls
very far short of the Hegelian identity of Being and Not-being. The Being
and Not-being of Plato never merge in each other, though he is aware that
'determination is only negation.'

After criticizing the hypotheses of others, it may appear presumptuous to
add another guess to the many which have been already offered. May we say,
in Platonic language, that we still seem to see vestiges of a track which
has not yet been taken? It is quite possible that the obscurity of the
Parmenides would not have existed to a contemporary student of philosophy,
and, like the similar difficulty in the Philebus, is really due to our
ignorance of the mind of the age. There is an obscure Megarian influence
on Plato which cannot wholly be cleared up, and is not much illustrated by
the doubtful tradition of his retirement to Megara after the death of
Socrates. For Megara was within a walk of Athens (Phaedr.), and Plato
might have learned the Megarian doctrines without settling there.

We may begin by remarking that the theses of Parmenides are expressly said
to follow the method of Zeno, and that the complex dilemma, though declared
to be capable of universal application, is applied in this instance to
Zeno's familiar question of the 'one and many.' Here, then, is a double
indication of the connexion of the Parmenides with the Eristic school. The
old Eleatics had asserted the existence of Being, which they at first
regarded as finite, then as infinite, then as neither finite nor infinite,
to which some of them had given what Aristotle calls 'a form,' others had
ascribed a material nature only. The tendency of their philosophy was to
deny to Being all predicates. The Megarians, who succeeded them, like the
Cynics, affirmed that no predicate could be asserted of any subject; they