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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: be entertained respecting the nature of the process. Parmenides attributes
the difficulties in which Socrates is involved to a want of
comprehensiveness in his mode of reasoning; he should consider every
question on the negative as well as the positive hypothesis, with reference
to the consequences which flow from the denial as well as from the
assertion of a given statement.
The argument which follows is the most singular in Plato. It appears to be
an imitation, or parody, of the Zenonian dialectic, just as the speeches in
the Phaedrus are an imitation of the style of Lysias, or as the derivations
in the Cratylus or the fallacies of the Euthydemus are a parody of some
contemporary Sophist. The interlocutor is not supposed, as in most of the
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