Kuno Fischer (pp. 102-103) after Hegel (Gesch. der Griech. Phil. I. p. 202), and some of the followers of Hegel, extol the Parmenides as a masterpiece of dialectics, though they complain that "der philosophirende Pöbel" misunderstand it, and treat it as obscure. Werder, Logik, pp. 92-176, Berlin, 1841. Carl Beck, Platon's Philosophie im Abriss ihrer genetischen Entwickelung, p. 75, Reutlingen, 1852. Marbach, Gesch. der Griech. Phil. sect. 96, pp. 210-211.] [Side-note: No dogmatical solution or purpose is wrapped up in the dialogue. The purpose is negative, to make a theorist keenly feel all the difficulties of theorising.] In so far as these different expositions profess, each in its own way, to detect a positive dogmatical result or purpose in the Parmenides,[54] none of them carry conviction to my mind, any more than the mystical interpretations which we read in Proklus. If Plato had any such purpose, he makes no intimation of it, directly or indirectly. On the contrary, he announces another purpose not only different, but contrary. The veteran Parmenides, while praising the ardour of speculative research displayed by Sokrates, at the same time reproves gently, but distinctly, the confident forwardness of two such immature youths as Sokrates and Aristotle in laying down positive doctrines without the preliminary exercise indispensable for testing them.[55] Parmenides appears from the beginning to the end of the dialogue as a propounder of doubts and objections, not as a doctrinal teacher. He seeks to restrain the haste of Sokrates--to make him ashamed of premature affirmation and the false persuasion of knowledge--to force upon him a keen sense of real difficulties which have escaped his notice. To this end, a specimen is given of the exercise required. It is certainly well calculated to produce the effect intended--of hampering, perplexing, and putting to shame, the affirmative rashness of a novice in philosophy. It exhibits a tangled skein of ingenious contradiction which the novice must somehow bring into order, before he is in condition to proclaim any positive dogma. If it answers this purpose, it does all that Parmenides promises. Sokrates is warned against attaching himself exclusively to one side of an hypothesis, and neglecting the opposite: against surrendering himself to some pre-conception, traditional, or self-originated, and familiarising his mind with its consequences, while no pains are taken to study the consequences of the negative side, and bring them into comparison. It is this one-sided mental activity, and premature finality of assertion, which Parmenides seeks to correct. Whether the corrective exercises which he prescribes are the best for the purpose, may be contested: but assuredly the malady which he seeks to correct is deeply rooted in our human nature, and is combated by Sokrates himself, though by other means, in several of the Platonic dialogues. It is a rare