The Timaeus of Plato

INTROD UCTION. 7
Not-being is not, neither is there Becoming ;
for Becoming
is the
synthesis of Being and Not-being. Again
if there is not Becoming,
Motion exists not either, for Becoming is a motion, and
all motion is
becoming. Multitude, Motion, Becoming all these
are utterly obliterated and annihilated from out of the nature of
things : only the One exists, abiding in its changeless eternity of
stillness 1 .
7. Such is the answer returned by Parmenides and his school The Eleato
the question asked at the beginning of our previous section, takei^by^'
Material nature is in continual flux, you say, and cannot be itself, is as
6
known: good then material nature does not exist. But Being aTthat'of
or the One does exist and can be known, and it is all there is to Heraklei-
, tos.
know.
Now it is
impossible to conceive a sharper antithesis than
that which exists at all points between the two theories I have
just sketched. The Herakleiteans flatly deny all unity and rest,
the Eleatics as flatly deny all plurality and motion. If then either
of these schools is entirely right,
the law of contradiction is
peremptory the other must be entirely wrong. Is then either
entirely right or wrong ?
We have already admitted that Herakleiteanism presents us
with a most significant truth, and also that it
remorselessly sweeps
away all basis of knowledge. Therefore we conclude that, though
Herakleitos has given us a truth, it is an incomplete and 'onesided
truth. Let us notice next how the Eleatics stand in this
respect.
About the inestimable value of the Eleatic contribution
there
can be no doubt. Granted that the phenomena of the material
world are ever fleeting and vanishing and can never be known
what of that ? The material world does not really exist : it is not
there that we must seek for the object of knowledge, but in the
eternally existent Unity. Thus they oppose the object of reason
1 This sheer opposition of the ex- little value he might attach to opinion,
istent unity to the non-existent plurality was bound to take account of it*,
led Parmenides to divide his treatise That Parmenides was perfectly conon
Nature into two distinct portions, sistent in embracing the objects of
dealing with Truth and Opinion. I Opinion in his account, I admit. But
am not disposed to contest Dr Jack- none the less does his language justify
son's affirmation that ' Parmenides, the statements in the text : he emwhile
he denied the real existence phatically affirms the non-existence of
of plurality, recognised its apparent phenomena, and has no care to exexistence,
and consequently, however plain why they appear to exist.