And the subjective notions in our mind, which have the same name with them, are likewise only relative to one another, and not to the ideas which have the same name with them, and belong to themselves, and not to the ideas.

How do you mean? said Socrates.

I may illustrate my meaning in this way, said Parmenides:-A master has a slave; now there is nothing absolute in the relation between them; they are both relations of some man to another man; but there is also an idea of mastership in the abstract, which is relative to the idea of slavery in the abstract; and this abstract nature has nothing to do with us, nor we with the abstract nature; abstract natures have to do with themselves alone, and we with ourselves. Do you see my meaning?

Yes, said Socrates, I quite see your meaning.

And does not knowledge, I mean absolute knowledge, he said, answer to very and absolute truth?

Certainly.

And each kind of absolute knowledge answers to each kind of absolute being?

Yes.

And the knowledge which we have, will answer to the truth which we have; and again, each kind of knowledge which we have, will be a knowledge of each kind of being which we have?

Certainly.

But the ideas themselves, as you admit, we have not, and cannot have?

No, we cannot.

And the absolute ideas or species, are known by the absolute idea of knowledge?

Yes.

And what is an idea which we have not got?

No.

Then none of the ideas are known to us, because we have no share in absolute knowledge?

They are not.

Then the ideas of the beautiful, and of the good, and the like, which we imagine to be absolute ideas, are unknown to us?

That appears to be the case.

I think that there is a worse consequence still.

What is that?

Would you, or would you not, say, that if there is such a thing as absolute knowledge, that must be a far more accurate knowledge than our knowledge, and the same of beauty and other things?

Yes.

And if there be anything that has absolute knowledge, there is nothing more likely than God to have this most exact knowledge? Certainly.

But then, will God, having this absolute knowledge, have a knowledge of human things?

And why not?

Because, Socrates, said Parmenides, we have admitted that the ideas have no relation to human notions, nor human notions to them; the relations of either are in their respective spheres.

Yes, that has been admitted.

And if God has this truest authority, and this most exact knowledge, that authority cannot rule us, nor that knowledge know us, or any human thing; and in like manner, as our authority does not extend to the gods, nor our knowledge know anything which is divine, so by parity of reason they, being gods, are not our masters; neither do they know the things of men.

trous.

Yet, surely, said Socrates, to deprive God of knowledge is mons

These, Socrates, said Parmenides, are a few, and only a few, of the difficulties which are necessarily involvel in the hypothesis of the existence of ideas, and the attempt to prove the absoluteness of each of them; he who hears of them will doubt or deny their existence, and will maintain that even if they do exist, they must necessarily be unknown to man, and he will think that there is reason in what he says, and as we were remarking just now, will be wonderfully hard of being convinced; a man must be a man of real ability before he can understand that everything has a class and an absolute essence; and still more remarkable will he be who makes out all these things for himself, and can teach another to analyse them satisfactorily. I agree with you, Parmenides, said Socrates; and what you say is very much to my mind.

And yet, Socrates, said Parmenides, if a man, fixing his mind on these and the like difficulties, refuses to ackonwledge ideas or species of existences, and will not define particular species, he will be at his wit's end; in this way he will utterly destroy the power of reasoning; and that is what you seem to me to have particularly noted.