NEW BOOKS. with the opponent* of Parmenidea, a method which he ia careful to describe for o». Plato takes a number of objections to the doctrine of the *' participation " of sensible things in «Vhj and states them w ith great force. The objections are not hi* own, and there ia not the alightest reason to assume, as Hoffding doe*, that he thought them really dangerous. In point of fact, they are all fallacious, but it is not Plato s game to tell us so. He leaves them where they.are and turns on

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... he disciple* of the Eleatica from whom the objections come. "Socrates' theory leads to difficulties 1" he eaya. " Well, take your own doctrine of the One, let it be subjected to a dialectic like your own, and see how you like its consequences." When one has once grasped the point that the whole thing is a subtle jest, a turning of the Megarian dialectic* on the men of Megara, one is in a position to appreciate the structure of the dialogue for the masterpiece of art it really if. HOffding misses the fun, asks no questions about the address of the satire and so falls into the mistake of assuming both that Plato was perplexed by the paralogisms of the first part and was unaware that there is a great deal of " sophistry " in the second. He even makes the singular mistake of saying that the antithesis One-Many is badly chosen for Plato's purposes and that he would have done better to deal with that of Same-Other, making here a curious error of fact. He quotes Parm. 139d for the view that the (pxxrit of the One is identical with that of the Same. But he has omitted an oi>x-Plato expressly says that the two things »re jiot the same and gives an unanswerable reason for the distinction, mi., that what is the " same as 2 " is not 1 but 2. A. E. TATLOB.