[Footnote 32: In this third branch of the argument, showing that Ens, even if known, cannot be communicable to others, Gorgias travels beyond the Absolute, and directs his reasoning against the communicability of the Relative or Phenomenal also. Both of his arguments against such communicability have some foundation, and serve to prove that the communicability cannot be exact or entire, even in the case of sensible facts. The sensations thoughts, emotions, &c., of one person are not _exactly_ like those of another.] Such is the reasoning, as far as we can make it out, whereby Gorgias sought to prove that the absolute Ens was neither existent, nor knowable, nor communicable by words from one person to another. [Side-note: Zeno and Gorgias--contrasted with the earlier Grecian philosophers.] The arguments both of Zeno and of Gorgias (the latter presenting the thoughts of others earlier than himself), dating from a time coinciding with the younger half of the life of Sokrates, evince a new spirit and purpose in Grecian philosophy, as compared with the Ionians, the two first Eleates, and the Pythagoreans. Zeno and Gorgias exhibit conspicuously the new element of dialectic: the force of the negative arm in Grecian philosophy, brought out into the arena, against those who dogmatized or propounded positive theories: the fertility of Grecian imagination in suggesting doubts and difficulties, for which the dogmatists, if they aspired to success and reputation, had to provide answers. Zeno directed his attack against one scheme of philosophy--the doctrine of the Absolute Many: leaving by implication the rival doctrine--the Absolute One of Parmenides in exclusive possession of the field, yet not reinforcing it with any new defences against objectors. Gorgias impugned the philosophy of the Absolute in either or both of its forms--as One or as Many: not with a view of leaving any third form as the only survivor, or of providing any substitute from his own invention, but of showing that Ens, the object of philosophical research, could neither be found nor known. The negative purpose, disallowing altogether the philosophy of Nature (as then conceived, not as now conceived), was declared without reserve by Gorgias, as we shall presently find that it was by Sokrates also. [Side-note: New character of Grecian philosophy--antithesis of affirmative and negative--proof and disproof.]