[34] Compare Republic, v. p. 476 B. ὁ γιγνώσκων γιγνώσκει τὶ ἢ οὐδὲν; Γιγνώσκει τί, &c.
The following passage in the learned work of Cudworth bears on the portion of the Parmenidês which we are now considering. Cudworth, Treatise of Immutable Morality, pp. 243-245.
“But if any one demand here, where this ἀκίνητος οὐσία, these immutable Entities do exist? I answer, first, that as they are considered formally, they do not properly exist in the Individuals without us, as if they were from them imprinted upon the Understanding, which some have taken to be Aristotle’s opinion; because no Individual Material thing is either Universal or Immutable.… Because they perish not together with them, it is a certain argument that they exist independently upon them. Neither, in the next place, do they exist somewhere else apart from the Individual Sensibles, and without the Mind, which is that opinion that Aristotle justly condemns, but either unjustly or unskilfully attributes to Plato.… Wherefore these Intelligible Ideas or Essences of Things, those Forms by which we understand all Things, exist nowhere but in the mind itself; for it was very well determined long ago by Socrates, in Plato’s Parmenidês, that these things are nothing else but Noemata: ‘These Species or Ideas are all of them nothing but Noemata or Notions that exist nowhere but in the Soul itself’.…
“And yet notwithstanding, though these Things exist only in the Mind, they are not therefore mere Figments of the Understanding.…
“It is evident that though the Mind thinks of these Things at pleasure, yet they are not arbitrarily framed by the Mind, but have certain, determinate, and immutable Natures of their own, which are independent upon the Mind, and which are blown (quære not blown) away into Nothing at the pleasure of the same Being that arbitrarily made them.”
It is an inadvertence on the part of Cudworth to cite this passage of the Parmenidês as authenticating Plato’s opinion that Forms or Ideas existed only in the mind. Certainly Sokrates is here made to express that opinion, among others; but the opinion is refuted by Parmenidês and dropped by Sokrates. But the very different opinion, which Cudworth accuses Aristotle of wrongly attributing to Plato, is repeated by Sokrates in the Phædon, Republic, and elsewhere, and never refuted.
This reply, though scanty and undeveloped, is in my judgment both valid, as it negatives the Subject pure and simple, and affirms that to every conception in the mind, there must correspond a Concept out of (or rather along with) the mind (the one correlating with or implying the other) — and correct as far as it goes, in declaring what that Concept is. Such Concept is, or may be, the Form. Parmenides does not show that it is not so. He proceeds to impugn, by a second argument, the assertion of Sokrates — that the form is a Conception wholly within the mind: he goes on to argue that individual things (which are out of the mind) cannot participate in these Forms (which are asserted to be altogether in the mind): because, if that were admitted, either every such thing must be a Concipient, or must run into the contradiction of being a Conceptio non concipiens.[35] Now this argument may refute the affirmation of Sokrates literally taken, that the Form is a Conception entirely belonging to the mind, and having nothing Objective corresponding to it — but does not refute the doctrine that the Form is a Concept correlating with the mind — or out of the mind as well as in it. In this as in other Concepts, the subjective point of view preponderates over the objective, though Object is not altogether eliminated: just as, in the particular external things, the objective point of view predominates, though Subject cannot be altogether dismissed. Neither Subject nor Object can ever entirely disappear: the one is the inseparable correlative and complement of the other: but sometimes the subjective point of view may preponderate, sometimes the objective. Such preponderance (or logical priority), either of the one or the other, may be implied or connoted by the denomination given. Though the special connotation of the name creates an illusion which makes the preponderant point of view seem to be all, and magnifies the Relatum so as to eclipse and extinguish the Correlatum — yet such preponderance, or logical priority, is all that is really meant when the Concepts are said to be “in the mind” — and the Percepts (Percepta, things perceived) to be “out of the mind”: for both Concepts and Percepts are “of the mind, or relative to the mind”.[36]
[35] On this point the argument in the dialogue itself, as stated by Parmenides, is not clear to follow. Strümpell remarks on the terms employed by Plato. “Der Umstand, dass die Ausdrücke εἶδος und ἰδέα nicht sowie λόγος den Unterschied, zwischen Begriff und dem durch diesen begriffenen Realen, hervortreten lassen — sondern, weil dieselben bald im subjektiven Sinne den Begriff, bald im objektiven Sinne das Reale bezeichnen — bald in der einen bald in der andern Bedeutung zu nehmen sind — kann leicht eine Verwechselung und Unklarheit in der Auffassung veranlassen,” &c. (Gesch. der Gr. Philos. s. 90, p. 115).
[36] This preponderance of the Objective point of view, though without altogether eliminating the Subjective, includes all that is true in the assertion of Aristotle, that the Perceptum is prior to the Percipient — the Percipiendum prior to the Perceptionis Capax. He assimilates the former to a Movens, the latter to a Motum. But he declares that he means not a priority in time or real existence, but simply a priority in nature or logical priority; and he also declares the two to be relatives or reciproca. The Prius is relative to the Posterius, as the Posterius is relative to the Prius. — Metaphys. Γ. 1010, b. 36 seq. ἀλλ’ ἔστι τι καὶ ἕτερον παρὰ τὴν αἴσθησιν, ὃ ἀναγκη πρότερον εἶναι τῆς αἰσθήσεῶς· τὸ γὰρ κινοῦν τοῦ κινουμένου φύσει πρότερόν ἐστι· κἂν εἰ λέγεται πρὸς ἄλληλα ταῦτα, οὐδὲν ἧττον.
See respecting the πρότερον φύσει, Aristot. Categor. p. 12, b. 5-15, and Metaphys. Δ. 1018, b. 12 — ἁπλῶς καὶ τῇ φύσει πρότερον.