129

Logic IV. 135
afterward, in which it happens to the convenient to keep up the idea. Thus. all three representations (they can no probably be called assertions) have not together the weight of one plain asseveration by an unknown witness. Still, it must be admitted that they ought to have some weight. Let us see whether such an interview (of course, no such discussion took place, --that is out of the question,--but whether a meeting on any such footing) can have taken place in Athens between Parmenides at 65 years of age, and Socrates while he was "very young," yet old enough to have philosophical opinions, an older than Aristotle who is old enough to respond to the interrogations of Parmenides with an intelligence unexampled in any previous dialogue of Plato. For this purpose, it i snecessary to compare the ages of Socrates and Parmenides. Beginning with Socrates, almost everything we know is contained in the following passage of Diogenes Laertuis, which I am obliged to take from the translation of [Yonge?] in Bohn's Classical Library. "[Heliodorus?] says that Euripides dies before Socrates [this is quite unquestionable and of no help]; and