“ The Eleatic unity is Goodness, and is beyond the sphere of sensible apprehension. This goodness, therefore, alone exists; matter, motion, growth and decay are figments of the senses; they have no existence for Reason. “Whatever is, is!” Knowledge is of ideas and is in conformity with the necessary laws of thought. Hence Plato in the Sophist describes the Megarians as “the friends of ideas.” Yet the Megarians were by no means in agreement with the Platonic idealism. ”

“ The strength of these men lay in destructive criticism rather than in construction: as dialecticians they were successful, but they contributed little to ethical speculation. They spent their energy in attacking Plato and Aristotle, and hence earned the opprobrious epithet of Eristic. ”

“ They used their dialectic subtlety to disprove the possibility of motion and decay; unity is the negation of change, increase and decrease, birth and death. None the less, in ancient times they received great respect owing to their intellectual pre-eminence. ”