common sense, Plato propounds for our consideration a theory of the nature
of the negative.

The theory is, that Not-being is relation. Not-being is the other of
Being, and has as many kinds as there are differences in Being. This
doctrine is the simple converse of the famous proposition of Spinoza,--not
'Omnis determinatio est negatio,' but 'Omnis negatio est determinatio';--
not, All distinction is negation, but, All negation is distinction. Not-
being is the unfolding or determining of Being, and is a necessary element
in all other things that are. We should be careful to observe, first, that
Plato does not identify Being with Not-being; he has no idea of progression
by antagonism, or of the Hegelian vibration of moments: he would not have
said with Heracleitus, 'All things are and are not, and become and become
not.' Secondly, he has lost sight altogether of the other sense of Not-
being, as the negative of Being; although he again and again recognizes the
validity of the law of contradiction. Thirdly, he seems to confuse
falsehood with negation. Nor is he quite consistent in regarding Not-being
as one class of Being, and yet as coextensive with Being in general.
Before analyzing further the topics thus suggested, we will endeavour to
trace the manner in which Plato arrived at his conception of Not-being.

In all the later dialogues of Plato, the idea of mind or intelligence
becomes more and more prominent. That idea which Anaxagoras employed
inconsistently in the construction of the world, Plato, in the Philebus,
the Sophist, and the Laws, extends to all things, attributing to Providence
a care, infinitesimal as well as infinite, of all creation. The divine
mind is the leading religious thought of the later works of Plato. The
human mind is a sort of reflection of this, having ideas of Being,
Sameness, and the like. At times they seem to be parted by a great gulf
(Parmenides); at other times they have a common nature, and the light of a