of the Megarians. He did not mean to say that Being or Substance had no
existence, but he is preparing for the development of his later view, that
ideas were capable of relation. The fact that contradictory consequences
follow from the existence or non-existence of one or many, does not prove
that they have or have not existence, but rather that some different mode
of conceiving them is required. Parmenides may still have thought that
'Being was,' just as Kant would have asserted the existence of 'things in
themselves,' while denying the transcendental use of the Categories.

Several lesser links also connect the first and second parts of the
dialogue: (1) The thesis is the same as that which Zeno has been already
discussing: (2) Parmenides has intimated in the first part, that the
method of Zeno should, as Socrates desired, be extended to Ideas: (3) The
difficulty of participating in greatness, smallness, equality is urged
against the Ideas as well as against the One.

II. The Parmenides is not only a criticism of the Eleatic notion of Being,
but also of the methods of reasoning then in existence, and in this point
of view, as well as in the other, may be regarded as an introduction to the
Sophist. Long ago, in the Euthydemus, the vulgar application of the 'both
and neither' Eristic had been subjected to a similar criticism, which there
takes the form of banter and irony, here of illustration.

The attack upon the Ideas is resumed in the Philebus, and is followed by a
return to a more rational philosophy. The perplexity of the One and Many
is there confined to the region of Ideas, and replaced by a theory of
classification; the Good arranged in classes is also contrasted with the
barren abstraction of the Megarians. The war is carried on against the
Eristics in all the later dialogues, sometimes with a playful irony, at
other times with a sort of contempt. But there is no lengthened refutation