Development Of The Human Soul

Appendix 6. (1184).

In considering the nature of the idea, we have shown that it is simple and eternal, and identically present to several intellects and to multiple acts of the intellect itself. Moreover, despite its being used and as it were bound by the spirit through perceptions to certain feelings, or certain acts, it remains intuited in itself. It is still free, and reusable. In other words, without ever multiplying itself, it is applied to itself by the spirit and to all the information that the spirit acquires through it. When all this has been clearly understood, or its factual truth has been recognised through contemplative observation, it is easy to reply to the objection that Plato puts in the mouth of Parmenides in the dialogue named after this great Italian philosopher. In the book, Socrates maintains that species are distinct from individual things and share in them; he insists that things are many, but species one only.

Parmenides then made the following objection. He wanted to exclude multiplicity and reduce everything to unity in the following way: 'As far as I can see, your reason for thinking that each species is one is this. When you see, for example, several big things, you imagine that in contemplating all of them you have a single idea. Consequently, you imagine that bigness (size) is one.' Here, Parmenides hits upon the truth, because it is the unicity of the idea which unifies the species or essence of several equal individuals, who are nothing more than different realisations of the same idea. Parmenides then immediately objects that if this is so, species would have to be multiplied ad infinitum. He says, 'But if you consider in your spirit the biggest itself (size) in exactly the same way as other things which are big, don't you see the necessity of yet another big thing (another size) in which all these big things may be seen? - So it would seem. - In that case, we have another species of bigness, besides bigness itself and the things that share in it. And again, in all these things there is yet another bigness through which they are all big. In this case, each species will no longer be one, but rather infinite in number.' This difficulty is resolved if we consider that the idea of bigness is applied to itself without losing its identity and unity. This enables us to compare bigness and big things and, as it were, measure them. We do not need another idea of bigness. We can measure things with that bigness with which we conceive separately both bigness and big things. The objection, however, was very much to the point, and shows the acuteness of thought possessed by the ancients.