of making the most damaging reflections on the Sophist and all his kith and
kin, and to exhibit him in the most discreditable light.

Nor need we seriously consider whether Plato was right in assuming that an
animal so various could not be confined within the limits of a single
definition. In the infancy of logic, men sought only to obtain a
definition of an unknown or uncertain term; the after reflection scarcely
occurred to them that the word might have several senses, which shaded off
into one another, and were not capable of being comprehended in a single
notion. There is no trace of this reflection in Plato. But neither is
there any reason to think, even if the reflection had occurred to him, that
he would have been deterred from carrying on the war with weapons fair or
unfair against the outlaw Sophist.

III. The puzzle about 'Not-being' appears to us to be one of the most
unreal difficulties of ancient philosophy. We cannot understand the
attitude of mind which could imagine that falsehood had no existence, if
reality was denied to Not-being: How could such a question arise at all,
much less become of serious importance? The answer to this, and to nearly
all other difficulties of early Greek philosophy, is to be sought for in
the history of ideas, and the answer is only unsatisfactory because our
knowledge is defective. In the passage from the world of sense and
imagination and common language to that of opinion and reflection the human
mind was exposed to many dangers, and often

'Found no end in wandering mazes lost.'

On the other hand, the discovery of abstractions was the great source of
all mental improvement in after ages. It was the pushing aside of the old,
the revelation of the new. But each one of the company of abstractions, if