2. The second point which deserves notice in this portion of the Parmenidês, is the answer of Sokrates (when embarrassed by some of the questions of the Eleatic veteran)--"That these Forms or Ideas are conceptions of the mind, and have no existence out of the mind". This answer gives us the purely Subjective, or negation of Object: instead of the purely Objective (Absolute), or negation of Subject.[32] Here we have what Porphyry calls the deepest question of philosophy[33] explicitly raised: and, as far as we know, for the first time. Are the Forms or Ideas mere conceptions of the mind and nothing more? Or are they external, separate, self-existent realities? The opinion which Sokrates had first given declared the latter: that which he now gives declares the former. He passes from the pure Objective (_i.e._, without Subject) to the pure Subjective (_i.e._, without Object). Parmenides, in his reply, points out that there cannot be a conception of nothing: that if there be Conceptio, there must be _Conceptum aliquid_:[34] and that this Conceptum or Concept is what is common to a great many distinct similar Percepta. [Footnote 32: Plato, Parmenid. p. 132 A-B. The doctrine, that [Greek: poio/têtes] were [Greek: philai\ e)/nnoiai], having no existence without the mind, was held by Antisthenes as well as by the Eretrian sect of philosophers, contemporary with Plato and shortly after him. Simplikius, Schol. ad Aristot. Categ. p. 68, a. 30, Brandis. See, respecting Antisthenes, the first volume of the present work, p. 165.] [Footnote 33: See the beginning of Porphyry's Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle. [Greek: bathuta/tê ou)/sês tê=s toiau/tês pragmatei/as], &c. Simplikius (in Schol. ad Aristot. Categ. p. 68, a. 28, ed. Brandis) alludes to the Eretrian philosophers and Theopompus, who considered [Greek: ta\s poio/têtas] as [Greek: phila\s mo/nas e)nnoi/as diakenô=s legome/nas kat' ou)demi/as u(posta/seôs, oi(=on a)nthrôpo/têta ê)\ i(ppo/têta], &c.] [Footnote 34: Compare Republic, v. p. 476 B. [Greek: o( gignô/skôn gignô/skei ti\ ê)\ ou)de\n? Gignô/skei ti/], &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.