Sext. Math. vii. 13, mentions, and whose disagreement with Diodorus in respect of the possible (see p. 193, 1 and 2) Epictet. Diss. ii. 19, 5, speaks of, is mentioned by Diog. v. 68, as the teacher of the Peripatetic Lyco, and must therefore have flourished 280 to 270 B.C. A dialectician Aristides is also mentioned by Diog. ii. 113, among the cotemporaries of Stilpo, and an Aristotle living in Sicyon about 255 Plut. Arat. 3. Linias who is there mentioned with him appears also to have been a Megarian. Somewhat younger must have been Artemidorus, who wrote against Chrysippus, Diog. ix. 53.

1 Diog. ix. 61: Пúpρwv ňкovσe Βρύσωνος τοῦ Στίλπωνος, ὡς ̓Αλέξανδρος ἐν Διαδοχαῖς. Suid. Πύῤῥων: διεήκουσε Βρύσωνος, τοῦ Κλεινομάχον μαθητοῦ. Instead of Bryso, Apúowv was formerly read in Diog. Sext. Math. vii. 13, however also calls him Bryso. Suid. Πύῤῥων. These statements are not without

their difficulties. Allowing it to be possible that Clinomachus and not Stilpo instructed Bryso, or that he enjoyed the instruction of both, the chronology is still troublesome. For how can Pyrrho, before Alexander's expedition to Asia, as Diog. expressly says, have studied under the son of a man, whose own professional career probably comes after that expedition? It seems as though the relation of Pyrrho to Bryso as pupil and teacher were an imaginary combination, designed to connect the school of Pyrrho with the Megarian. Possible it also is that Bryso, the teacher of Pyrrho, has been wrongly identified with the son of this Stilpo. Suid. Σωκρατ. calls Bryso the teacher of Pyrrho, a pupil of Socrates, or according to others, a pupil of Euclid. Röper Philol. xxx. 462, proposes to read in the passage of Diog. instead of Βρύσωνος τοῦ Στίλπωνος, Βρύσ. ἢ Στίλπ.

2 Diog. ix. 109.

1 Soph. 242, B. Plato defined Sophistry as the art of deception. The difficulty immediately arises, that deception is only then possible, when not-being, to which all deception refers, admits a certain kind of being. It may then be asked, how is the being of the not-being possible? To answer this question Plato reviews various opinions respecting being. In the first place he examines the two most opposite statements, that being is the many, and that it is the one, and after having shown that neither a manifoldness of original substances without a substratum of unity, nor the unity of the Eleatics excluding the many, can be admitted, he continues, p. 245, E.: TOùs μèv Tolνυν διακριβολογουμένους ὄντος τε πέρι καὶ μὴ πάντας μὲν οὐ διεληλύθαμεν, ὅμως δὲ ἱκανῶς ἐχέτω τοὺς δὲ ἄλλως λέγοντας αὖ θεαTéov. These are again divided into classes, those who only allow reality to what is material, and others who are called 248, A. oi Twv eidŵv píλoi. Of the latter it is stated 246, B.: τοιγαροῦν οἱ πρὸς αὐτοὺς (the materialists) audioBηToûtes μáλα εὐλαβῶς ἄνωθεν ἐξ ἀοράτου ποθὲν ἀμύνονται νοητὰ ἄττα καὶ ἀσώματα εἴδη βιαζόμενοι τὴν ἀληθινὴν οὐσίαν εἶναι· τὰ δὲ ἐκείνων σώματα καὶ τὴν λεγομένην ὑπ' αὐτῶν ἀλήθειαν κατὰ σμικρὰ διαθραύοντες ἐν τοῖς λόγοις γένεσιν

αὐτ ̓ οὐσίας φερομένην τινὰ προσαγορεύουσιν.

u.

2 Platon's Werke, ii. 2. 3 Ast, Platon's Leben Schreiben, 201; Deycks, 37; Heindorf on Soph. 246, B.; Brandis, ii. a., 114; Hermann, Plat. 339; Ges. Abh. 246; Stallbaum, Plat. Parm. 60; Soph. f. Polit. 61; Susemihl, Genet. Entw. i. 298; Steinhart, Allg. Encyk. i. 29, 53; Platon's Werke, iii. 204, 423, 554; Henne, École de Mégare, 84158; Prantl, Gesch. d. Log. i. 37.

Against Schleiermacher are Ritter, Rhein. Mus. von Niebuhr und Brandis ii. 305; Petersen, Zeitschrift f. Alterthümer, 1836, 892, Henne, p. 49, and Mallet, p. xxx., refers the description in Theætet. 185, C. of the formation of conceptions, to the Megarians, on the ground that it does not agree with Plato's own method. But it would seem that he is wrong in so doing, since we have no reason to think of others besides Plato and Socrates. Just as little may the passage in Parm. 131, B. be referred to the Megarians, as has been done by Schleiermacher, Pl. Werke, i. 2, 409, and Deycks, p. 42. The question whether things participate in Ideas, is one which the Megarians did not examine, and it is widely remote from the view discussed in the Sophistes.

fied in applying to them.

By making use of the

The following are the reasons. It is clear and generally allowed that Plato's description is too minute to be without reference to some philosophic School then existing. Even Deussen, De Plat. Sophistes Marb. 1869, p. 44, is reduced to admit this. There is also definite reference to a Socratic School in the passage where an opinion is attributed to certain philosophers, to the effect that true existence only belongs to immaterial things. A philosophy of conceptions was unknown before the time of Socrates, and the description agrees with no one of the preSocratic Schools. The philosophers of conceptions are clearly distinguished from the Eleatics, and are manifestly quite different from them. Still less can the Pythagoreans be thought of, as Mallet has done, p. liii.; for they had neither a philosophy of conceptions, nor did they indulge in that subtle refutation of opponents, which Plato attributes to these philosophers. Nor can the language of Plato, 246, C., be quoted to prove the contrary, where speaking of the dispute between the idealists and the materialists he says that: ἐν μέσῳ δὲ περὶ ταῦτα ἄπλετος ὀμφοτέρων μάχη τις ἀεὶ ξυνέστηκεν. This does not mean that this dispute has always existed, but that it was as old as the Schools themselves, or that, every time the point was touched upon, a

The

violent altercation ensued between the parties. We are not obliged by this statement to refer this view to an earlier period than that of Socrates. And among the Socratic Schools there is none to which it can be attributed with so much probability as to the Megarian. Some think that the passage refers to Plato (as Socher, Plat. Schriften, 265, and Schaarschmidt, Die Sammlung der Plat. Sch., 210, do); and this reference commends itself most to those who with them declare that the Sophistes is not the work of Plato. reference would of course be to an earlier form of Plato's teaching or to such Platonists as had failed to advance with their school. This is the view of Ueberweg, Unters. Plat. Schrif. 277; Pilger, Ueber d. Athetese d. Plat. Soph. Berlin, 1869, 21; Grote, Plato, i. 458; iii. 482; Campbell, the Sophistes and Politicus of Plato, Soph. lxxiv. f. 125. But is it likely that Plato can have treated a theory of his own with so much irony as he lavishes, p. 246, A. B., on these eidŵr pino? Is it Plato's teaching, or have we reason for thinking that it ever was Plato's teaching, that the dúναμις τοῦ ποιεῖν does not belong to Being but to the Becoming? In his system, as far as it is known to us, it does belong to the idea of the good, to the creative voûs of Timæus, to the airía of Philebus, which must at any rate be reckoned as ovoía

and not as yéveσis, and in Phædo 95, E., it belongs to ideas in general. Moreover, if the contested theory only belonged to a small portion of Plato's scholars, how could the little fraction be opposed to the materialists as the chief supporters of the idealistic point of view? Does not the whole description create the impression that the contrast was one which the writer saw before him, and not one made from different conceptions of his own metaphysic? It might seem that by friends of edŋ in this passage Euclid cannot have been meant, because (1) according to Aristotle's definite assertion (Metaph. i. 6, 987, b, 7; xiii. 4, 1078, b, 9; Eth. N. 1. 4, 1096, a, 13) Plato first brought up the doctrine of ideas, and (2) the Megarians held one and not many primary substances. The first reason is not very cogent. Doubtless Plato first brought into notice the doctrine of ideas to which Aristotle refers, allowing that Euclid agreed with him in declaring the eldos to be the only real element in things. Neither is the second argument conclusive. Euclid may well in cases of materialism have insisted, that in every object the incorporeal form was the only real thing, and yet have gathered all these forms together under the one substance -the good. If the latter assertion involved him in contradiction with his original pre

mises, the contradiction is not greater than that involved in denying every change, and yet speaking of an action, an èvepyev of being. Indeed, how otherwise can he have advanced from the Socratic philosophy of conceptions to his doctrine of unity? And does not the language of the Sophistes, 246, B, telling, how that the friends of ideas destroy matter by resolving it into its smallest particles, best correspond with Euclid and his school? Does it not best harmonise with the statement of Aristocles respecting the Megarians, that the latter should have refused to being the capacity to act or to suffer? whereas this would not at all harmonise with Plato. these philosophers are included 245, E., among those ǎλAws λéγοντες is not true, ἄλλως λέγοντες meaning here literally those who speak differently, with whom all does not turn (as with the philosophers tioned 243, D) upon the antithesis of being and not-being. With the philosophers to whom Plato comes 245, E., the question is not whether there is one or more than one form of being, everything else being not-being, but whether there is only the corporeal or the incorporeal. Conf. p. 243, D, with 246, A. Compare Henne, 105; Bonitz, Plat. Stud. ii. 49. In the explanation of διακριβο λoyouuévous, no one appears to have exactly hit the mark.

That

men