speaks against the dialectic of showing how anything may be refuted from some point of view or another. We see that Plato, in respect of content, expresses nothing excepting what is called indifference in difference, the difference of absolute opposites and their unity. To this speculative knowledge he opposes the ordinary way of thinking, which is positive as well as negative; the former, not bringing the thoughts together, allows first one and then the other to have value in their separation; the latter is, indeed, conscious of a unity, though it is of a superficial, differentiating unity in which the two moments are separate, as standing in different aspects. The second point against which Plato argues is the dialectic of the Eleatics, and their assertion, which in its nature resembles that of the Sophists, that only Being is, and non-being is not. To the Sophists this means, as Plato puts it: Since the negative is not, but only Being is, there is nothing false; everything existent, everything which is for us, is thus necessarily true, and what is not, we do not know or feel. Plato reproaches the Sophists for thus doing away with the difference between true and false.[39] Having arrived at this stage in the knowledge of the dialectic (and the whole matter is merely a difference of stages) the Sophists could allow what they promise—that everything that the individual, according to his belief, makes his end and interest, is affirmative and right. Hence it cannot be said that such and such an act is wrong, wicked, a crime; for this would be to say that the maxim of the action is wrong. No more can it be said that such and such opinion is deceptive, for in the opinion of the Sophists the proposition implies that what I feel or represent to myself, in as far as it is mine, is an affirmative content, and thus true and right. The proposition in itself seems quite abstract and innocent, but we first notice what is involved in such abstractions when we see them in concrete form. According to this innocent proposition there would be no wickedness and no crime. The Platonic dialectic is essentially different from this kind of dialectic.